He started in his seat as if suddenly awakening. For a moment or two he had been freed from the consciousness of his misfortune, but now, at the thought of his wife, it came back to him in all its horror. The very fact that he was a priest, and should live blamelessly, made the coming shame more intolerable; the gossip and scandal cut him like the lash of ironbound thongs. "Better if she had never, never returned," he thought in his bitterness of heart. "She has made life impossible for me at home here. We shall have to go and live abroad." Strangely enough, however, his thoughts soon turned from his wife, and settled again on the old homestead with its uncanny story. It was his father who had told him of Hånger, and there was much besides the murder and the curse in what he said. He had told how none knew where the Hånger folk had come from. Five brothers had suddenly appeared in the parish, all big, handsome, strong men, but of unknown family, from an unknown land, speaking an unknown tongue. It was generally believed that they were the offspring of trollfolk, by some woman who had fallen into their power, and, in truth, their wildness and violent character, their courage and sharpness, their strange ways and obstinate will, and, more than all, their extraordinary success in acquiring goods and property, gave further credence to the legend. These men, who had come into the district as poor labourers, had in the course of a few years made themselves, first, masters of Hånger, where the eldest brother had settled down, and afterward, of four other estates. It was comforting to think of those forefathers of his. They had never been like the other peasants round them. They had dressed grandly, and walked proudly; they might have been gentry themselves, but had never cared about it. He felt to-day the need of something to increase his self-respect, and he found a certain dignity in belonging to a richly gifted and famous race. And all things considered, he was perhaps not so very unlike them after all. Lotta Hedman had herself compared him to a troll, and reminded him that he came of a race of wild men. If only he had not been a priest, and forced to hold his own powerful nature constantly in check! He called to mind the night when he had gone in pursuit of the frightened Bailie--it must have been the old trollfolk blood breaking out in him.