Ragni was in the garden one day, early in October, gathering fruit and things for the kitchen. She went across to the railing by the church road as a carriage came driving slowly upwards. A very stout man sat on the seat, swaying about with the jolting of the carriage, like milk in a pail. Ragni's pigeons were winging their homeward flight from the church roof and flew just over the carriage; the peculiar flapping of the wings made him turn his head in the direction they were flying. "Are those pigeons?" asked he, and the coachman answered. Ragni was just going to climb up on a ladder to gather some apples, but she had to hold fast; that heavy voice, that drawling dialect, and that north country monotony, all that belonged to Sören Kule! His blind eyes were partly turned to where the pigeons were, and partly to where the answer had come from, as he was driven slowly rumbling away. Sören Kule here? Surely a blind, half-paralyzed man does not go travelling about? The inheritance which twice had fallen to his share, could it be that, that had brought him here? Shortly after, Kallem arrived. She saw directly that he too had met Kule, and he saw at once that she had retreated into the big room to hide herself; they met there, she laid her head on his shoulder; it seemed to her there were evil spirits in the air. Kallem said to himself: If Sören Kule has come to take possession of one of the places bequeathed to the family, and is going to move up here, then Josephine must have had a hand in it; her "spirit of justice" has been on the alert. The only person in the whole world whom he thought he had not treated well, and to whom he had not tried to make amends, was this blind man. I will go and seek him out, he thought; I will speak openly with him. I can at the same time make it clear to him, that for Ragni's sake he must not remain here. He soon heard where Kule lived: in the house just behind theirs; in the park, next to the hospital! So this share of the inheritance had fallen to him; and were they to have him here every day? He walked about a long time trying to gain some control over himself; but when he stood in front of the house, he was still so indignant that he had difficulty in keeping calm. It was a little stone house two stories high and with a garden in front; in the passage he could hear sounds of washing up from the kitchen, and looked in there first. There stood the Norland giant kitchen-maid with tucked-up sleeves, as unchanged as if they had parted yesterday. As the door opened, she looked over her shoulder and recognised directly the tall man with the spectacles, with hooked nose and bushy brows; she smiled and turned round to him. "Surely that is Kal-lem?" she sang out. "Yes." "I was told yesterday that you lived here," she smiled still more. Oh, you sly fish, thought he, you have known it a long time. "When did you come here?" "We came yesterday." "From Kristiania?"