She looked by turns at him, and out towards the children in the apple-tree. The doctor had just told her that Lars Tobiassen had become raving mad, and that his son had been frightened, and gone mad also. He had been near it for a long time. "'Kurt inheritance,' the people on the mountain say there have been so many mad Kurts there, men and women." Fru Rendalen had answered that she was aware of that, and that both before Tomas's birth, and for some time afterwards, she had felt frightened. She was safe now though--"although," and she laughed, "Tomas has something unreasonably exaggerated and fantastic about him." She looked inquiringly at the doctor, who answered, "Yes, his nerves are good for nothing." Dr. Knut Holmsen was one of those men who are foreordained to be bachelors, though some chance may drift them into matrimony; who never trouble themselves to think or feel with any one else, but always look at things from their own point of view. So now he blurted out this answer as a matter of course. It frightened her, however, terribly. "Could Tomas become mad?" she asked. He had not intended to say that; he therefore answered, "Not he, but his children." She came and stared at him, her face as white as a sheet, and from him out into the garden. "Do you know what you are saying?" she asked. Holmsen coloured, for this rough man was particularly faint-hearted. And, to relieve his embarrassment, he began to talk about a book which he had just read, one that every one ought to read-- "Prosper Lucas on Heredity" (_L'hérédité naturelle_). The two young people in the apple-tree soon afterwards saw Dr. Knut Holmsen go down to the town, accompanied by Fru Rendalen, and a little later she returned, with two large volumes under her arm. The following evening Tomas sailed, and remained away for two months. At both the ports which he visited he found letters, written every day since he sailed by the faithful Karl, as well as a few lines enclosed by his mother, but not a line from Augusta. She was ill, had a heart complaint--an enlarged heart, it was said. And Tomas remembered that latterly she had always wanted to be in the open air. She had pains in her heart, but a courageous girl like Augusta would naturally never succumb. She would get quite well again. The ship returned to port late one evening. No one at "The Estate" had any idea of it before Tomas flung himself on to his mother's neck, in the parlour, as she sat there over her accounts. "Tomas?" she exclaimed, almost as though she were seriously frightened, and that made him all the more crazy with delight. He clung to her portly person with all his strength ... then ... he noticed that she was crying. Astonished, he relinquished his hold, looked at her, and flung himself down with his head on the table sobbing loudly.