If she had had the power, she would have whipped them like naughty boys and then granted them her grace and favor again. But now she feared for her beloved lands, which were in the pensioners’ hands to be guarded by them, as wolves guard the sheep, as crows guard the spring grain. There are many who have suffered the same sorrow. She is not the only one who has seen ruin come to a beloved home and well-kept fields fall into decay. They have seen their childhood’s home look at them like a wounded animal. Many feel like culprits when they see the trees there wither away, and the paths covered with tufts of grass. They wish to throw themselves on their knees in those fields, which once boasted of rich harvests, and beg them not to blame them for the disgrace which befalls them. And they turn away from the poor old horses; they have not courage to meet their glance. And they dare not stand by the gate and see the cattle come home from pasture. There is no spot on earth so sad to visit as an old home in ruin. When I think what that proud Ekeby must have suffered under the pensioners’ rule, I wish that the plan of the major’s wife had been fulfilled, and that Ekeby had been taken from them. It was not her thought to take back her dominion again. She had only one object,—to rid her home of these madmen, these locusts, these wild brigands, in whose path no grass grew. While she went begging about the land and lived on alms, she continually thought of her mother; and the thought bit deep into her heart, that there could be no bettering for her till her mother lifted the curse from her shoulders. No one had ever mentioned the old woman’s death, so she must be still living up there by the iron-works in the forest. Ninety years old, she still lived in unceasing labor, watching over her milk-pans in the summer, her charcoal-kilns in the winter, working till death, longing for the day when she would have completed her life’s duties. And the major’s wife thought that her mother had lived so long in order to be able to lift the curse from her life. That mother could not die who had called down such misery on her child. So the major’s wife wanted to go to the old woman, that they might both get rest. She wished to struggle up through the dark woods by the long river to the home of her childhood. Till then she could not rest. There were many who offered her a warm home and all the comforts of a faithful friendship, but she would not stop anywhere. Grim and fierce, she went from house to house, for she was weighed down by the curse. She was going to struggle up to her mother, but first she wanted to provide for her beloved home. She would not go and leave it in the hands of light-minded spendthrifts, of worthless drunkards, of good-for-nothing dispersers of God’s gifts.