* * * * * * * * * * * * * Mrs. Tiralla sat with closed eyes behind her husband, whose broad back kept off the wind. They could not have taken any other carriage, as it would have been upset on the bad roads. It was difficult enough even for this open conveyance, with its big, clumsy wheels, to get along, for sometimes the wheels would be high up, sometimes low down, it all depended on whether there was more or less ice in the ruts. [Pg 89] How awful it was to live in such a flat country. Mrs. Tiralla sighed, as she sat wrapped up in her fur cloak and many shawls. The schoolmaster was right, this was no place for her. Life in these surroundings made one feel quite strange. She had, indeed, been born for something else. Had not her priest said to her even in the old days when she was still so young, "Thou art chosen amongst many"? And what had been her lot? The woman flashed a furious look through her half-closed lids at the man sitting in front. Now he was taking her once more to be exhibited, just like a breeder who wishes to win a prize for the animal he has kept in such good condition. Mrs. Tiralla was filled with a wild fury; she would have liked to hurl her husband out of the carriage. If only he were lying in the snow; if only the wheels would go over him; if only she could seize the reins and whip up the horses, "_Huj_, _het!_" Free, free! But--then her head drooped and a sudden sadness came over her--she had not the courage to do it. She had put the rat poison in the lumber-room in the old gaily painted chest from her girlhood, where nobody would look for it. She had told her husband that the rats had eaten it all, and he had believed her. He had not been surprised that they had not found any dead rats, for it is a well-known fact that animals hide in any hole they can find when they have been poisoned. There they die. If only she had not been so terrified when Marianna shrieked "Poison, poison!" How awful it would be if that big man were to roll his eyes and foam at the mouth and shriek, "Poison, poison!"