_He_ would be a laughing-stock, Erlend too, as much as she—or even more, for he was no green boy any longer. But it was he who would have this wedding; he had set his heart on seeing her stand as his bride in silk and velvets and tall golden crown—_that_ was his will, and it had been his will, too, to possess her in those sweet secret hours of last spring. She had yielded to him in that. And she must do his will too in this other thing. But in the end ’twas like he would be forced to see—no one could have it both ways in such things. He had talked so much of the great Yule-tide feast he would hold at Husaby the first year she sat there as mistress of his house—how he would show forth to all his kinsmen and friends and all the folks from far around the fair wife he had won. Kristin smiled scornfully. A seemly thing ’twould be this Yule-tide, such a home-coming feast! Her time would be at St. Gregory’s Mass or thereabout. Thoughts seemed to swarm and jostle in her mind when she said to herself that at Gregory’s Mass she was to bear a child. There was some fear among the thoughts—she remembered how her mother’s cries had rung all round the farm-place for two whole days, the time that Ulvhild was born. At Ulvsvold two young wives had died in childbirth, one after the other—and Sigurd of Loptsgaard’s first wives too. And her own father’s mother, whose name she bore— But fear was not uppermost in her mind. She had often thought, when after that first time she saw no sign that she was with child—maybe this was to be their punishment—hers and Erlend’s. She would always be barren. They would wait and wait in vain for what they had feared before, would hope as vainly as of old they had feared needlessly—till at last they would know that one day they should be borne forth from the home of his fathers and be as though they had never been—for his brother was a priest, and the children he had could inherit naught from him. Dumpy Munan and his sons would come in and sit in their seats, and Erlend would be blotted out from the line of his kindred. She pressed her hand hard to her body. It was there—between the fence and her—between the vat and her. ’Twas between her and all the world—Erlend’s own son. She had made the trial already that she had once heard Lady Aashild speak of; with blood from her right arm and her left. ’Twas a son that was coming to her—whatever fate he was to bring—She remembered her dead little brothers, her parents’ sorrowful faces when they spoke of them; she remembered all the times she had seen them both in despair for Ulvhild’s sake—and the night when Ulvhild died. And she thought of all the sorrow she herself had brought them, of her father’s grief-worn face—and the end was not yet of the sorrows she was to bring on her father and mother.