The herdsmen must have wandered up from the south mostly, for Vilarsten, or Resting-stone, where they were wont to rest after their long tramp, still lay at the roadside, just south of the farm. But there was something about that road that made people afraid to venture out on it after dark. At the time that Mårbacka was a summer _säter_ there lived in the parish of Sunne a priest who was so harsh and exacting that a man who had been a servant in his home a few months went and hanged himself. The priest, when he learned what had happened, without stopping to think, cut the body down and carried it out into the yard. Then, because he had touched a suicide, and for no other reason, he was regarded as polluted and disgraced. The people of Sunne would not allow him to set foot in the church, which remained closed until another clergyman was called. The Sunne priest used also to officiate at Ämtervik, where they had a church and a little parish house but no resident clergyman. He probably thought that in an out-of-the-way place like Ämtervik no one would know of his being “unclean”; there, surely, he might celebrate the Mass, as usual. So he rode down to Ämtervik. But the evil report was there before him. As he stood at the altar intoning the Mass, murmurs ran through the congregation; the people thought him unworthy to stand in the House of God. Nor did it end there. The Ämtervik peasants felt that he had shown them great disrespect. They were as good men as the Sunne folk, they said, and would not have a priest others had repudiated. A few among the younger peasants got together and planned to give him something to remember. But knowing it was dangerous to lay violent hands on a priest, they decided to wait till he set out for home. He rode alone, and there were many lonely spots along the bridle-paths between Ämtervik and Sunne where the men could lie in wait for him. The priest must have sensed danger, for instead of taking the usual road to Sunne to the west of the dale, he took the _säter_ paths to eastward past Mårbacka--thinking to find his way home. The men, ambushed at the roadside, seeing no sign of the priest, knew of course that he had eluded them, and thought they would have to go home without carrying out their purpose. But it happened that one of the men was a brother to the servant who had taken his own life on account of the priest and he was not going to let him escape so easily. He seized a long stackpole which had been left standing in the field since haying time, and set off toward the marshes; the others did likewise--running and leaping across the bogs. Just below Mårbacka-säter they touched firm ground; then, hurrying southward to intercept the priest, they came upon him in the road near the Resting-stone.