“God’s way with sinners,” said Tuft, “may seem cruel, but it is really kind and merciful.  The death of that woman will work for Edward’s good:  Of course, he feels it keenly now, but he will get over it.  It is a blessing in disguise.”

As soon as Tuft uttered these words he felt the sheer brutality of them.  By a strange irony of fate, his own child had fallen ill about the time that Ragni took to her bed, and the minister and his wife were now talking over the couch of their suffering little boy.  Something was wrong with his chest, and Josephine would have liked to call in her clever brother in place of the ordinary family doctor, but she would not humble herself to beg his help.  Perhaps it was the shock of her husband’s words that aroused her, but that night the springs of her nature were strangely opened.  She came downstairs in her nightdress to Tuft’s bed, and awoke him.  Her eyes were fixed in a blank stare.

“I can’t sleep, Ole,” she whispered.  “I want to warn you.  That woman—­ Edward’s wife—­is trying to take away our boy.  We have been too hard on her—­too hard.  Now she will make us pay for it.”

“You are not yourself, Josephine,” said Tuft, rising up, and dressing himself hastily.  “I will fetch the doctor.”

“No, no!” she cried.  “Ask Edward to come.”

Tuft did not dare do this himself, but he got his doctor to approach Kallem, who made an appointment to examine the child early next morning.  Josephine shrieked when she saw him.  Under the stress of mental suffering, the flesh on his face had wasted to the bone; he was the image of death.  Without speaking to either of the parents he went to the child, tapped its chest lightly here and there, and then said something to the doctor and went out.

“He has gone to get his instruments,” the doctor whispered.  “The case is extremely serious.  An operation must be performed at once.”

Josephine did not speak, neither did Tuft.  They had been watching Kallem’s face as he bent over their boy, and in it they seemed to read the sentence of death.  They had called him in too late.

They were mistaken.  Edward Kallem came hurrying back with a staff of trained assistants.  Tuft and Josephine were locked outside their child’s room.  An hour afterwards the door was opened.  The boy’s life was saved.  This they learnt from their own doctor, but Kallem himself departed without even speaking to them.

IV.—­The Reconciliation

That night, over the body of the sleeping child, Ole Tuft at last dealt sternly and truly with himself.  Three times, in the course of the day, had he gone to Kallem’s house to thank him for saving his boy’s life.  But Kallem had refused to see him.  At the third refusal Tuft understood.  If ever he entered his brother-in-law’s house he would enter it a changed man.  He was now vowing that he would begin this new life by uniting Edward and Josephine.  It was his jealousy, he admitted to himself, which had been the root of all the mischief.