leased and touched at her words.

"Yes, I mean it," said Fru Heyerdahl. "But I was obliged to try and
shift the blame a little your way, otherwise Barbro would have been
convicted, and you too. It was all for the best, indeed it was."

"I thank you kindly," said Axel.

"And it was I and no other that went about from one to another through
the place, trying to do what I could for you both. And you saw, of
course, that we all had to do the same thing--make out that you were
partly to blame, so as to get you both off in the end."

"Ay," said Axel.

"Surely you didn't imagine for a moment that I meant any harm to you?
When I've always thought so well of you!"

Ay, this was good to hear after all the disgrace of it. Axel, at any
rate, was so touched that he felt he must do something, give Fru
Heyerdahl something or other, whatever he could find--a piece of meat
perhaps, now autumn was come. He had a young bull....

Fru Lensmand Heyerdahl kept her word; she took Barbro to live with
her. On board the steamer, too, she looked after the girl, and saw
that she was not cold, nor hungry; took care, also, that she did not
get up to any nonsense with the mate from Bergen. The first time it
occurred, she said nothing, but simply called Barbro to her. But a
little while after there was Barbro with him again, her head on one
side, talking Bergen dialect and smiling. Then her mistress called her
up and said: "Really, Barbro, you ought not to be going on like that
among the men now. Remember what you've just been through, and what
you've come from."

"I was only talking to him a minute," said Barbro. "I could hear he
was from Bergen."

Axel did not speak to her. He noticed that she was pale and
clear-skinned now, and her teeth were better. She did not wear either
of his rings....

And now here is Axel tramping up to his own place once more. Wind and
rain, but he is glad at heart; a mowing-machine and a harrow down at
the quay; he had seen them. Oh, that Geissler! Never a word had he
said in town about what he had sent. Ay, an unfathomable man was
Geissler.

Chapter VIII

Axel had no long time to rest at home, as it turned out; the autumn
gales led to fresh trouble and bothersome work that he had brought
upon himself: the telegraph apparatus on his wall announced that the
line was out of order.

Oh, but he had been thinking overmuch of the money, surely, when he
took on that post. It had been a nuisance from the s