THE OUTCAST BY SELMA LAGERLÖF TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY W. WORSTER, M. A. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, TORONTO DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1922 BOOKS BY SELMA LAGERLÖF JERUSALEM, A Novel (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) CHRIST LEGENDS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF NILS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NILS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) GIRL FROM THE MARSH CROFT (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) LEGEND OF THE SACRED IMAGE (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST (_Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flack_) STORY OF GÖSTA BERLING (_Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flack_) THE EMPEROR OF PORTUGALLIA (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) THE OUTCAST (_Trans. from Swedish by W. Worster, M. A._) CONTENTS BOOK I Grimön In God's House Father, Mother, and Son The "Naiad" The Schoolhouse The Stonehills The Sea Sailing Less than the Least BOOK II Lotta Hedman The Wonderful Music Sigrun Hånger The Meeting The Vicarage Preparations The Flight The Long Day Morning BOOK III The Bereaved A Letter The Trollfolk of Hånger The Lifting of the Curse Ung-Joel In the Nets The Sermon of the Sacredness of Life The Fifth Commandment Conclusion BOOK I THE OUTCAST GRIMÖN ON THE island of Grimön, among the rocks and reefs of the western coast of Sweden, there lived, some years back, a man and his wife. The two were much unlike each other. Joel Elversson, the husband, was the elder of the pair by fifteen years or so. Ill-favoured to look at, heavy and slow, he had always been, and age had not improved him. His wife, on the other hand, was still as neat and pleasant a little body as ever; far from having lost her looks, she seemed almost as pretty now, at fifty, as she had been at twenty. One fine Sunday evening the couple were sitting on a big flat rock just outside their house, chatting together at their ease. Joel was a man who enjoyed hearing his own voice, and delivered his words with care. Just now he was giving his wife at some length the contents of an article he had read in the paper. The little woman listened, but her thoughts were not following very closely. "Eh," she thought to herself, "he's a wonderful head has Joel, to be sure. How he can get all that out of a bit of print in a newspaper.... Pity he can't put his learning to some use for us both, instead of others."