"And now," cried his wife, with an indescribable contempt in her voice--"now I know what it is Pastor's got to say. Sven's not good enough for _her_ now, and so he's got Pastor to come and persuade us to let him come back here. Isn't that it?" "I daresay that would be best, if it could be done," said Joel, slowly. "But I say no!" cried his wife. "I say no! He shan't come back here because he's nowhere else to go. He forgot all about us as long as he was well off and comfortable; don't let him think we're anxious to have him now. Poor and old we may be, and needing help. But we'll not have a son that's done things so nobody else will own him." Joel Elversson looked at his wife, with anger and impatience in his eyes. He was old and weak, and it would have been a grand thing for him to have a son at home able to work. His wife's feeling seemed to him childish and unreasonable; she was obstinate; she was downright wicked. "Wait," he thought to himself. "Wait, and you'll soon hear something more to your mind." "Just as I said," he went on aloud. "Pastor won't find it so hard, after all, to tell you what was in the letter." "It--isn't it what I thought, then?" asked his wife in a milder tone. Her stubbornness was shaken by his evident anger and disapproval. He looked at her sternly. "Would you like me to tell you myself, or wait till Pastor comes?" And in his impatience to punish her for her want of affection, he did not wait for an answer, but went on: "They live in London--the Springfields. And Sven had gone back home to them there. But when the ugly stories began to get about, the father sent a paper with the news up to him--and a loaded revolver with it." "And the mother--what about her? Did she know he'd sent it?" "She knew--yes." "And--and what then?" "Then--why, it came about as they wished. That's all." "And now--he's dead." "Now--now you know what Pastor had to tell you," said her husband. "And she," cried the poor mother--"she that was not his mother at all, but had had him with her all those years, she let him kill himself, when he'd done no wrong?" She turned on her husband fiercely. "You lie!" she cried. "It is not true!" "I'd have said those very words myself an hour ago. I wouldn't have believed that a woman could be so heartless. But since I've heard you, now, I can believe it." "But--but he hadn't only them to look to. He'd his mother and father here." "Most likely he thought we'd take it the same way. And he wasn't so far wrong, it seems." Mor Elversson turned away, and sat down on the rock. The tears ran down her cheeks. "Sven's dead," she said, "dead. No mother but a woman with a heart of stone--and she let him die." She sat awhile, weeping and moaning. "O God, why did we ever let him go? And that woman to send him to his death for nothing! When it was the others that made him ..." "You'd better try and be calm a bit," said her husband. "Here's the Pastor coming. The boat's just putting in."