She felt she would gladly have stayed for ever in this dark still church—with the few small spots of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet stale scent of incense and the warm smell of the burning wax. And she at rest within her own star— It was as if some great joy were at an end, when Sister Cecilia came gliding to her and touched her shoulder. Bending before the altars, the three women went out of the little south-door into the convent close. Ingebjörg was so sleepy that she went to bed without a word. Kristin was glad—she had been loth to have her good thoughts broken in on. And she was glad, too, that they must keep on their shifts at night—Ingebjörg was so fat and had been so over-hot. She lay awake long, but the deep flood of sweetness that she had left lifting her up as she knelt in the church would not come again. Yet she felt the warmth of it within her still, she thanked God with all her heart, and thought she felt her spirit strengthened while she prayed for her father and mother and sisters and for Arne Gyrdson’s soul. Father, she thought—she longed so much for him, for all they had been to one another before Simon Darre came into their lives. There welled up in her a new tenderness for him—there was as it were a foretaste of mother’s love and care in her love for her father this night; dimly she felt that there was so much in life that he had missed. She called to mind the old, black wooden church at Gerdarud—she had seen there this last Easter the graves of her three little brothers and of her grandmother, her father’s own mother, Kristin Sigurdsdatter, who died when she brought him into the world— What could Erlend Nikulaussön have to do at Gerdarud—she could not think. She had no knowledge that she had thought much of him that evening, but the whole time the thought of his dark, narrow face and his quiet voice had hung somewhere in the dusk outside the glow of light that enfolded her spirit. When she awoke the next morning, the sun was shining into the dormitory, and Ingebjörg told her how Lady Groa herself had bidden the lay-sisters not to wake them for matins. She had said that when they woke they might go over to the kitchen-house and get some food. Kristin grew warm with gladness at the Abbess’ kindness—it seemed as if the whole world had been good to her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 The farmer guild of Aker had St. Margaret for their patroness, and they began their festival, each year on the twentieth of July, the day of St. Margaret’s Mass. In that day the guild-brothers and sisters, with their children, their guests and their serving-folk, gathered at Aker’s church and heard mass at St. Margaret’s Altar there; after that they wended their way to the hall of the guild which lay near the Hofvin hospital—there they were wont to hold a drinking-feast lasting five days.