"'In the left,'" said the woman. And quick as light he raised his hand and struck out her left eye. Took the eye clean out, never leaving a bit of it. And after that she could never all her life see anything out of ordinary. "And that was what Pastor did to me the first time we met," said Lotta in a high, shrill voice. "Pastor struck out my eye with the gift of sight out of my face, and ever since, my life's been all confusion. I can see, but only darkly; I can hear, but indistinctly, and I get no further, and find no one to listen to me. I'm poor and homeless, and I shall never be more than a poor working girl." The Pastor sat quietly listening, and when Lotta stopped a moment for breath, he said, without a trace of anger: "Go on with what you have to say, Lotta. I am sure you did not come to me to-day only to speak of these old things." "No," said Lotta, "but I want Pastor to remember that, because I have wronged you greatly afterward, in my turn. It may be well now and then to know that there are old debts owing, so one can ask for payment. And I have great need of mercy and forgiveness, as you will see." The Pastor shook his head. "Now I cannot see what you are thinking of." But Lotta answered steadily: "I know what it is I have to say, and it is no easy thing to confess, but before I come to that, there is one thing more I must tell you first. "I am not one to go tale-bearing about," she said, "and I have never said a word to Sigrun about it, but I know there is a place called Hånger. And I have heard the whole story of the priest who was murdered there, and the gatepost and the old woman at the window and the curse that lies on the men of Hånger. And it seems to me that a man who knows he is come of a strong, wild race, that has always been hard to get on with, and who knows, too, what manner of death awaits him--I think that man must have asked himself at times if he did right in taking for his wife a girl innocent and delicate as a newly opened leaf, and knowing nothing of all the dark within him." "Lotta Hedman!" The Pastor's voice was still calm enough; he was but warning Lotta not to go too far. "Let me go on, Pastor," she begged. "For I do not say this in any reproach, but only to remind you that there are faults on both sides, though the fault on ours, on Sigrun's and mine, is so much the greater that it will need much mercy and forgiveness in your scale to balance it. "And now I have only to tell you how it was Sigrun left us. And it is by her own wish that I tell you this. I have had a letter from her to-day, telling me to do it, and it has loosed me from my abasement and lifted me up out of my deceit, so that I can once more look my fellows in the face."