Now he meets old Dreier who gives him good advice: "How old are you? Twenty-four? Don't you marry, Joern. On no account. That would be the stupidest thing that you could do. I bet you $50.000 you don't dare do it. Time will tell, I say." "Take it for granted that I will wait yet ten years," he answered. And he went on thinking to himself, "It is pleasanter to go thus alone and let one's thoughts run on. Marry? Marry now? I will be on my guard. After I am thirty!" Then his thought came back to Lena. "She looked well as she flung the stool at the bull. Prancing like a three-year-old horse. Yesterday she did not look so well, her eyes were not so bright, she spoke harshly to Wieten (the old housekeeper) and said to her afterwards, 'Do not mind it, Wieten, I slept badly,' and laughed. Funny thing, slept badly? When one is on the go as she must be all day, one should sleep like a log. But that is all right in the May days. It is well that men understand this, otherwise every spring the world would go all to pieces." Then he rejoiced that he was so young and could point out on the farm what was his. "Later, when the years have gone by and I am well established I will take to myself a fine wife with money and golden hair. There are also rich girls who are as merry and fresh and as desirable and have as stately forms. It need not be just this one." Then he came to the parish clerk who had just been notified that day of six children to be baptized and who was complaining of the increase in births. Joern agreed with him: "What will we come to, if the folk increase like that? Marrying before twenty-five must simply be forbidden." "With these words he departed, filled with a proud consciousness that he was of the same opinion with so intelligent, experienced an old man as the parish clerk." At home he met Lena Tarn with an old farmer, who came to inquire after the fate of his son who had been with Joern in the war. Then for the first time the girl heard of the frightful misery and the suffering of the soldiers which cried to heaven, so that her face was drawn with pain. "Deep in her soul however thrilled and laughed a secret joy, that you have come back whole, Joern Uhl."