“Any one can do that but the bailiff and his wife,” whispers Madame Scharling. “We have to guard her. Especially to-night, when so many of her friends are here, two men sit on guard outside her door, and it is locked and barred so that no one can come in. But if any one got her out, countess, we should be so glad, both Scharling and I.” “Can I not go to her?” says the young countess. Madame Scharling seizes her eagerly by the wrist and leads her out with her. In the hall they throw a couple of shawls about them, and hurry across the yard. “It is not certain that she will even speak to us,” says the bailiff’s wife. “But she will see that we have not forgotten her.” They come into the first room in the wing, where the two men sit and guard the barred door, and go in without being stopped to the major’s wife. She was in a large room crowded with looms and other implements. It was used mostly for a weaving-room, but it had bars in the window and a strong lock on the door, so that it could be used, in case of need, for a cell. The major’s wife continues to walk without paying any attention to them. She is on a long wandering these days. She cannot remember anything except that she is going the hundred and twenty miles to her mother, who is up in the Älfdal woods, and is waiting for her. She never has time to rest She must go. A never-resting haste is on her. Her mother is over ninety years old. She would soon be dead. She has measured off the floor by yards, and she is now adding up the yards to furlongs and the furlongs to half-miles and miles. Her way seems heavy and long, but she dares not rest. She wades through deep drifts. She hears the forests murmur over her as she goes. She rests in Finn huts and in the charcoal-burner’s log cabin. Sometimes, when there is nobody for many miles, she has to break branches for a bed and rest under the roots of a fallen pine. And at last she has reached her journey’s end, the hundred and twenty miles are over, the wood opens out, and the red house stands in a snow-covered yard. The Klar River rushes foaming by in a succession of little waterfalls, and by that well-known sound she hears that she is at home. And her mother, who must have seen her coming begging, just as she had wished, comes to meet her. When the major’s wife has got so far she always looks up, glances about her, sees the closed door, and knows where she is. Then she wonders if she is going mad, and sits down to think and to rest. But after a time she sets out again, calculates the yards and the furlongs, the half-miles and the miles, rests for a short time in Finn huts, and sleeps neither night nor day until she has again accomplished the hundred and twenty miles. During all the time she has been in prison she has almost never slept. And the two women who had come to see her looked at her with anguish.