One Sunday afternoon, father and son went out to see how the crops were thriving that year. Arne ran about his father, shooting with a bow and arrow. Nils had himself made them for the boy. Thus they passed on directly up toward the road leading past the church and parsonage, down to what was called the broad valley. Nils seated himself on a stone by the roadside and fell to dreaming; the boy shot into the road and sprang after his arrow,--it was in the direction of the church. "Not too far away!" said the father. While the boy was playing there, he paused, as though listening. "Father, I hear music!" The father listened too; they heard the sounds of fiddling, almost drowned at times by loud shouts and wild uproar; but above all rose the steady rumbling of cart-wheels and the clatter of horses' feet; it was a bridal procession, wending its way home from church. "Come here, boy," shouted the father, and Arne knew by the tones of the voice that he must make haste. The father had hurriedly risen and hidden behind a large tree. The boy hastened after him. "Not here, over there!" cried the father, and the boy stepped behind an alder-copse. Already the carts were winding round the birch-grove; they came at a wild speed, the horses were white with foam, drunken people were crying and shouting; father and son counted cart after cart,--there were in all fourteen. In the first sat two fiddlers, and the wedding march sounded merrily through the clear air,--a boy stood behind and drove. Afterwards came a crowned bride, who sat on a high seat and glittered in the sunshine; she smiled, and her mouth drew to one side; beside her sat a man clad in blue and with a mild face. The bridal train followed, the men sat on the women's laps; small boys were sitting behind, drunken men were driving,--there were six people to one horse; the man who presided at the feast came in the last cart, holding a keg of brandy on his lap. They passed by screaming and singing, and drove recklessly down the hill; the fiddling, the voices, the rattling of wheels, lingered behind them in the dust; the breeze bore up single shrieks, soon only a dull rumbling, and then nothing. Nils stood motionless; there was a rustling behind him, he turned; it was the boy who was creeping forward.