“Lie down now,” he bade. “You know not yourself what you say, poor child. Now you must try if you can sleep—” But Kristin lay and felt the smart in her burnt hand, and despair and bitterness over her fate raged in her heart. No worse could have befallen her had she been the most sinful of women; everyone would believe—no, she could not, could not bear to stay on here in the Dale. Horror after horror rose before her—when her mother came to know of this—and now there was blood between them and their parish priest, ill-will betwixt all who had been friends around her the whole of her life. But the worst, the most crushing fear of all fell upon her when she thought of Simon and of how he had taken her and carried her away and stood forth for her at home, and borne himself as though she were his own possession—her father and mother had fallen aside before him as though she belonged already more to him than to them— Then she thought of Arne’s face in the coffin, cold and cruel. She remembered the last time she was at church, she had seen, as she left, an open grave that stood waiting for a dead man. The upthrown clods of earth lay upon the snow hard and cold and grey like iron—to this had she brought Arne— All at once the thought came to her of a summer evening many years before. She was standing on the balcony of the loft-room at Finsbrekken, the same room where she had been struck down that night. Arne was playing ball with some boys in the courtyard below, and the ball was hit up to her in the balcony. She had held it behind her back, and would not give it up when Arne came after it; then he had tried to wrest it from her by strength—and they had fought for it, in the balcony, in the room amid the chests, with the leather sacks, which hung there full of clothes, bumping their heads as they knocked against them in their frolic; they had laughed and struggled over that ball— And then, at last, the truth seemed to come home to her: he was dead and gone, and she should never again see his comely, fearless face nor feel the touch of his warm, living hands. And she had been so childish and so heartless as never to give a thought to what it must be for him to lose her—She wept bitter tears, and felt she had earned all her unhappiness. But then the thought came back of all that still awaited her, and she wept anew, for, after all, it seemed to her too hard a punishment— * * * * * It was Simon who told Ragnfrid of what happened in the corpse chamber at Brekken the night before. He did not make more of it than he needs must. But Kristin was so amazed with sorrow and night waking that she felt a senseless anger against him because he talked as if it were not so dreadful a thing after all. Besides it vexed her sorely that her father and mother let Simon behave as though he were master of the house. “And you Simon—surely you believe not aught of this?” asked Ragnfrid, fearfully.