It was a small but clean room with three beds. A miserable geranium in the window and a portrait of King Charles XV. on horseback, in frame and glass, hanging on the wall, a few photographs fastened up with pins, and beside them a violin with three strings, the fourth hanging down loose. The poor creature who lay there had once been a good-looking woman, should she recover she would still be hard-working and active. But now she was wasted away to skin and bone, her worn-out hard-working hands resting on the ragged sheet. But the man who sat beside her was not strong like she was; no, he was indeed a poor weak thing! A good-natured face, so far in keeping with the violin on the wall that perhaps a string had cracked in himself before the one now hanging there had given way. Tired and worn out by night-watching, he sat there quite by himself, not because the neighbours were chary with their help, but because the one who had last sat there was resting now until the last struggle should begin. It had touched Kallem to see that the neighbours kept watch on each side of the house, wishing to prevent Christmas merry-makers from passing that way; they relieved guard the whole night through. He heard this from the woman who came again about eleven o'clock to help. There was not much to be done except for the doctor, and he did not know whether he dare do anything. After the first injection of one-third of a milligramme the pulse was raised. Kallem felt some hope, but dare not send it on to the imploring eyes of the husband; it might deceive him. The pulse kept steady for a couple of hours, then it fell; a fresh dose and it rose again. He sat there watching her in great anxiety. He had a book with him and tried to hold it under the lamp, now and again he took in a little of it, but it was speedily forgotten. Not a word was spoken, but there were groans and sighs. The last shouts outside in the distance, the last sound of bells died away, the last door had long since been shut, the night was gray and still. Five children, the eldest not more than ten years old, were about to lose their provider, and the man who sat there, sometimes tapping his knees, then stroking them, or resting his elbows on them and clasping his hands together, and staring first at her, then at the doctor, alas, he too would lose his provider.