Glahn did not answer, and I went down again. After that warning he
would hardly dare to go out to-morrow--but what did he want to get
Maggie out under my window for, and fool with her there at the top of
his voice? Why didn't he go back home again, if the letter really asked
him, instead of going about as he often did, clenching his teeth and
shouting at the empty air: “Never, never! I'll be drawn and quartered
first?”
But the morning after I had warned him, as I said, there was Glahn the
same as ever, standing by my bed, calling out:
“Up with you, comrade! It's a lovely day; we must go out and shoot
something. That was all nonsense you said yesterday.”
It was no more than four o'clock, but I got up at once and got ready to
go with him, in spite of my warning. I loaded my gun before starting
out, and I let him see that I did. And it was not at all a lovely day,
as he had said; it was raining, which showed that he was only trying to
irritate me the more. But I took no notice, and went with him, saying
nothing.
All that day we wandered round through the forest, each lost in his own
thoughts. We shot nothing--lost one chance after another, through
thinking of other things than sport. About noon, Glahn began walking a
bit ahead of me, as if to give me a better chance of doing what I liked
with him. He walked right across the muzzle of my gun; but I bore with
that too. We came back that evening. Nothing had happened. I thought to
myself: “Perhaps he'll be more careful now, and leave Maggie alone.”
“This has been the longest day of my life,” said Glahn when we got back
to the hut.
Nothing more was said on either side.
The next few days he was in the blackest humor, seemingly all about the
same letter. “I can't stand it; no, it's more than I can bear,” he would
say sometimes in the night; we could hear it all through the hut. His
ill temper carried him so far that he would not even answer the most
friendly questions when our landlady spoke to him; and he used to groan
in his sleep. He must have a deal on his conscience, I thought--but why
in the name of goodness didn't he go home? Just pride, no doubt; he
would not go back when he had been turned off once.
I met Maggie every evening, and Glahn talked with her no more. I noticed
that she had given up chewing things altogether; she never chewed now. I
was pleased at that, and thought: She's given up chewing things; that is
one failing the less, and I love her twice as much as I did before!
One day she asked about Glahn--asked very cautiously. Was he not well?
Had he gone away?
“If he's not dead, or gone away,” I said, “he's lying at home, no doubt.
It's all one to me. He's beyond all bearing now.”
But just then, coming up to the hut, we saw Glahn lying on a mat on the
ground, hands at the back of his neck, staring up at the sky.
“There he is,” I said.
Maggie went straight up to him, before I could stop her, and said in a
pleased sort of voice:
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