He was so firmly persuaded of this and could produce such convincing proofs, that he neither saw nor heard a thing, near or distant--except as though he were listening to another person's account of it. He drummed on the window-sill and looked down the road. Two newly awakened butterflies circling round each other above and below his window, had not the smallest idea of all the difficulties that can ensue when one has a fortune and not the disposal of it. A little further away, shaded by the boy's footstool which had stood there forgotten for some days, a graceful declytera with its thin stalk covered with little red bells, rang her wedding-bells, a wedding without the slightest regard to the epistle to the Ephesians, V. 24. Therefore it was overlooked by the minister. Not even the bees belonging to Nergård the gardener--up here perhaps for the first time this year (would they remember the way, now that the wind had changed and the scent of the flowers gave them warning)--not even the bees did he hear buzzing round the new blossoms shaded by the house. Matrimonial difficulties as regards Ephesians V. 24, can weave a covering for the head even though the sun's rays be shining on the hair. His eyes were blind as the wind itself as he let them wander over the town, yonder on the gentle slope, with its three shades of green, the meadows, the corn-fields, and the woods. Just at that moment there lay a long black stripe across the water, and some single wavy lines; he was in the midst of it all, but saw nothing. A cow tethered over the way was lowing for water, water! All around him seemed in a state of invisible expectancy ... until the despairing cry of a child seemed to pierce the warm spring air, ... one single scream. He seemed to hear each vibration, it was like a cutting hand laid on his chest; he started up, listening breathlessly for the next. Would it never come, that next scream; the child must have disappeared after the first ... no, there it is again. The first scream had been despairing, this next was horror itself, and the next one too and the following one!... The minister stood there quite pale, with all his senses on the alert. He heard rapid footsteps across the sand to the right; it was his mother who came to the gate between the two gardens; she was a thin old woman, a black cap covering her chalk-white hair, which framed in a cautious and dry-looking face. "No," exclaimed the minister, "no, God be praised, that is not Edward; that flourish in the crying was not his; no, there are no flourishes about him; he bellows right out, he does!" "Whoever it is, it's a bad business," answered she. "You are right, mother," and in his heart he prayed for the little one crying so pitifully. But when he had done that, he gave thanks that it was not his boy, which was quite allowable.