And time went on. It was nearly noon before they came within sight of the second inn. Just as they were near enough to distinguish the buildings, a man came driving up with a milk-cart. "You'd better be careful, Gustavsson," he called to the knife-grinder. "They've telephoned up to the inn to be on the look-out for you. Say you're carrying infection. Vicar's wife at Algeröd died last night of the smallpox, and they say it's you and your woman brought it with you from Norway." Again they halted, and considered what was best to be done. At last they decided to turn back. Neither cared to drive on to the inn; it was too dangerous. The knife-grinder suggested making to the eastward, up toward Dalsland. "There's the railway runs from there to Göteborg, too, and nobody 'll know you there." They turned off accordingly, along a road running east, leading up again through a wild and barren mountain tract. The going was better here, but the poor beast was nearly spent. And after a third halt for rest and food, it had come to the bottom of its fodder bag. The knife-grinder brought out some bread and butter and fell to. Sigrun had nothing to eat with her, but she was not hungry. Afterward, when she looked back on that day, she wondered at herself. "It was strange. I was altogether calm, and felt nothing at all. No uneasiness, no weariness, not even hunger. I knew all the time all would turn out as it should. I was numbed, as it were, in a way, but I was strong and able to hold out all the time. There must have been something at hand, too, that helped me." While on the long road up to the plateau she asked a question. "Did you not say this morning that the woman who died was not your wife?" "I said so, yes. And it's the truth. She has a good husband and a decent home, but she liked better to go off with me." And Sigrun questioned him further; not that the matter interested her at all--nothing in the world interested her that day. But talking made the time pass more easily. "She liked you more than her husband, then?" "Well, I don't know rightly about that. She was married to a man named Sven Elversson. Mayhap you've heard of him?" Sigrun nodded. "I thought at first she'd wearied of him because of--that old business, you know," the man went on. "But after, I found out it was because she thought he didn't care about her himself." "She wasn't nice at all," said Sigrun. "And he only married her out of pity." "She was no beauty, that's true," said the man, "but she was a good soul for all that. She was that sort that'd do anything for one they cared about." Despite her indifference, Sigrun could not help feeling uneasy at these words. She asked no more about the woman. "Do you know where Sven Elversson is now?"