Arne thought of his own mother, and his heart was full of love to her.  What if he were to lose her because he had not sufficiently prized her, he thought; and he rushed home, to find his mother sleeping gently like a child.

Mother and son were much together in those days, and once they agreed to go to a wedding at a neighbouring farm.

For the first time in his life Arne drank too much, and all next day he lay in the barn.  He was full of self-reproach, and it seemed to him that cowardice was his besetting sin.

Cowardice had been his failing as a boy.  It had prevented him taking his mother’s part against his father, from leaving home, from mixing with people.  Cowardice had made him drunk, and, but for his fear and timidity, his verses would be better.

After searching everywhere for him, Margit eventually found him in the barn.  He tried to soothe her, and vowed that he would join his life more closely to his mother’s in future.  What moved him was that his loving, patient mother said that she had done a grievous wrong against him, and implored his forgiveness.

“Of course, I forgive you,” he said.

“God bless you, my dear, dear Arne.”

From that day, Arne was not only happier at home, but he began to look at other people more kindly, more with his mother’s gentle eyes.  But he still went about alone, and a strange longing often possessed his soul.

One summer evening Arne had gone out to sit by the Black Lake, a piece of water very dark and deep.  He sat behind some bushes and looked out over the water, and at the hills opposite, and at the homesteads in the valley.

Presently he heard voices close beside him.  A young girl, he made out, was grumbling because she had got to leave the parsonage, where she had been staying with Mathilde, the parson’s daughter, and it was her father who was taking her home.  A third voice, sharp and strident, was heard.

“Hurry up, now, Baard; push off the boat, or we sha’n’t be home to-night.”

The rattle of cart-wheels followed, and Baard fetched a box out of the cart, and carried it down to the boat.

Then Mathilde, the parson’s daughter, came running up calling, “Eli!  Eli!”

The two girls wept in each other’s arms.

“You must take this,” said Mathilde, giving her friend a bird-cage.  “Mother wants you to.  Yes, you must take Narrifas, and then you’ll often think of me.”

“Eli!  Come, come, Eli!” came the summons from the boat.

A moment after, and Arne saw the boat out in the water, Eli standing up in the stern, holding the bird-cage and waving her hand to Mathilde.  His eyes followed the boat, and he watched it draw near to the land.  He could see the three forms mirrored in the water, and continued gazing until they had left the boat and gone indoors at the biggest house on the opposite side of the lake.

Mathilde had sat for some time by the landing stage, but she had left now, and Arne was alone when Eli came out again for a last look across the water.  Arne could see her image in the lake.  “Perhaps she sees me now,” he thought.  Then, when the sun had set, he got up and went home, feeling that all things were at peace.