"Nils fluttered about all the girls and they about him. There was only one I wanted, but he took her from me at every dance, at every wedding, at every party; it was the one to whom I am now married.... I often had a desire, as I sat looking on, to make a trial of strength with him, just because of this matter; but I was afraid I might lose, and I knew that if I did so I should lose her too. When the others had gone, I would lift the weights he had lifted, kick the beam he had kicked, but the next time he danced away from me with the girl, I did not dare tackle him, although it chanced once, as Nils stood joking with her right before my face, that I laid hold of a good sized fellow who stood by and tossed him against the beam, as though for sport. Nils grew pale, too, that time. "If he had only been kind to the girl; but he was false to her, and that evening after evening. I almost think she cared more for him each time. Then it was that the last thing happened. I thought now it must either break or bear. Nor did the Lord want him to go about any longer; and therefore he fell a little more heavily than I had intended. I never saw him after that." They sat for a long time silent. Finally Baard continued:-- "I offered myself again. She answered neither yes nor no; and so I thought she would like me better afterwards. We were married; the wedding took place down in the valley, at the house of her father's sister, who left her property to her; we began with plenty, and what we then had has increased. Our gards lay alongside of each other, and they have since been thrown into one, as had been my idea from boyhood up. But many other things did not turn out as I had planned." He was long silent; Arne thought, for a while, he was weeping; it was not so. But he spoke in a still gentler tone than usual when he began again,-- "At first she was quiet and very sorrowful. I had nothing to say for her comfort, and so I was silent. Later, she fell at times into that commanding way that you have perhaps noticed in her; yet it was after all a change, and so I was silent then, too. But a truly happy day I have not had since I was married, and that has been now for twenty years." He broke the pin in two; then he sat a while looking at the pieces. "When Eli grew to be a large girl, I thought she would find more happiness among strangers than here. It is seldom that I have insisted on anything; it usually has been wrong, too, when I have; and so it was with this. The mother yearned for her child, although only the lake parted them; and at last I found out that Eli was not under the best influences over at the parsonage, for there is really much good-natured nonsense about the priest's family; but I found it out too late. Now she seems to care for neither father nor mother."