Sigrun listened tensely for a few moments. Then suddenly she turned away, so that he should not see her face. It was turned now toward the listener behind the trees. And he saw how, with features convulsed with passion, she, too, gave way to an outburst of feeling. Her eyes closed in pain, her hands were clenched together and her lips moved in silent plaint. Her husband could not hear the words, but from the movement of her lips he fancied he could read what she said. "And I can never tell him--never!" "'Come to me in autumn, when the winds rage over black waters,'" Sven Elversson went on, his voice one impassioned cry. "'At midnight, when the moon is hidden in stormy clouds.'" The listener in his hiding-place shuddered with chilly dread. He saw Sigrun lift her arms with a gesture of intense longing. He saw how the whispering lips again and again shaped their cry of agony: "And I can never tell him--never!" "'Sink with thy snow-cold breast to my heart,'" murmured Sven Elversson, in a breaking voice, "'and rest there, maiden from the grave, till thou hast loosed my soul from the fetters of life.'" The Pastor glanced away from his wife, and looked toward the post. It seemed as if it had stood there till this hour for a single purpose--to remind him that he came of a race never known to endure a wrong--a race that knew how to take vengeance. The two by the table said no word after the poem was finished. Sigrun rose hurriedly and went into the house. Sven Elversson walked the opposite way, through the trees, and past the gatepost, down to a little quiet pool, where he stood, looking down into the water. He had passed within a few steps of the listener, but without noticing him. And Rhånge felt that this man who loved Sigrun must die. It would be easy enough. Just creep up behind him and throw him into the water. He felt, too, that this man would not even attempt to defend himself. He would greet death as a welcome friend. It was a perilous moment. Then to the mind of the excited man came a thought which saved him. It had lain, no doubt, all ready in the depths of his soul for long, but only now did it rise up to his consciousness. "Once you drove out that man from your church because of what he had done to the dead; what is this you would do yourself to the living?" This thought it was that restrained him in that difficult hour. Was not life a thousand times more sacred than death? How could he, who had refused to admit Sven Elversson into his church, be now so savage as to entertain the thought of ending a fellow creature's life, of separating soul from body, to commit an act which held more than any could understand, and the consequences of which might go on through an eternity of eternities? When he looked again toward the pool where Sven Elversson had stood, he was gone.