"'Now you are wicked and unkind,' she said, 'to speak like that just because someone says things that do not please you to hear.' "And then she went away for good. "And I was glad that mother and father did not say anything, did not try to comfort me or explain things. I went out into the kitchen, all cold as it was, and sat down and cried. Cried for hours together. Crying for our beautiful friendship, and for my own soul that had been taken away and could never come back; I felt myself wronged and betrayed; and for the first time in my life I tasted that bitter fruit." Lotta Hedman had lowered her voice, just as when she had ended her long speech about the letter to the King and the Millennium. Her face showed deep suffering; she felt the agony of humiliation. HÅNGER OH, BUT Lotta Hedman was glad to tell her story. It was a delight to be able to speak of Sigrun. And she tried so hard to speak properly, and not in her country dialect; tried to speak as seriously as a book of devotion. And she was grateful to her listener, who sat there still, following all she said, with a patience that seemed as if it would never end. "And now there is only one thing more I have to tell you before you can give me the advice I want," she said. "Do not put yourself out in any way at all," he said. "Talk as you please; we have time enough before us." Lotta Hedman dropped back immediately into the tone of the story-teller. "Well, then, it was in the autumn of that same year," she began again, "and it had just come on to rain so heavily that we were obliged to hurry back into the house, father and mother and myself, or we should have been drenched to the skin. "And we had hardly got indoors when the door opened and a couple of big, burly men came rushing in. They asked quite nicely if they might stay till the rain was over. And father bade them welcome, and mother and I set out each our chair for them by the door. "And one of them was talkative, and asked father if he thought they could get work at the new sawmills they were building at Stenbroträsk. But the other man was very quiet, and said nothing, only sat staring out of the east window all the time. "And the rain was pouring against that window with full force. There was such a stream of water down the panes you could hardly see out. "I wondered what it could be he was staring at. For I was quite sure he must be looking at something else besides raindrops and hailstones. "And I went up and sat down in my old place by the window and looked out. "But there was nothing to be seen except the little grey outhouses and the water streaming from all the roofs. And it was so thick and dark outside you could hardly see as far as the river bank. And the rainclouds hung over beyond as close as a curtain.