“He is the son of the houseman at Pladsen.”

Oyvind had always known that he was a houseman’s son; but until now he had never realized it.  It made him feel so very little, smaller than all the rest; in order to keep up he had to try and think of all that hitherto had made him happy and proud, from the coasting hill to each kind word.  He thought, too, of his mother and his father, who were now sitting at home and thinking that he was having a good time, and he could scarcely hold back his tears.  Around him all were laughing and joking, the fiddle rang right into his ear, it was a moment in which something black seemed to rise up before him, but then he remembered the school with all his companions, and the school-master who patted him, and the priest who at the last examination had given him a book and told him he was a clever boy.  His father himself had sat by listening and had smiled on him.

“Be good now, dear Oyvind,” he thought the heard the school-master say, taking him on his lap, as when he was a child.  “Dear me! it all matters so little, and in fact all people are kind; it merely seems as if they were not.  We two will be clever, Oyvind, just as clever as Jon Hatlen; we shall yet have good clothes, and dance with Marit in a light room, with a hundred people in it; we will smile and talk together; there will be a bride and bridegroom, a priest, and I will be in the choir smiling upon you, and mother will be at home, and there will be a large gard with twenty cows, three horses, and Marit as good and kind as at school.”

The dancing ceased.  Oyvind saw Marit on the bench in front of him, and Jon by her side with his face close up to hers; again there came that great burning pain in his breast, and he seemed to be saying to himself:  “It is true, I am suffering.”

Just then Marit rose, and she came straight to him.  She stooped over him.

“You must not sit there staring so fixedly at me,” said she; “you might know that people are noticing it.  Take some one now and join the dancers.”

He made no reply, but he could not keep back the tears that welled up to his eyes as he looked at her.  Marit had already risen to go when she saw this, and paused; suddenly she grew as red as fire, turned and went back to her place, but having arrived there she turned again and took another seat.  Jon followed her forthwith.

Oyvind got up from the bench, passed through the crowd, out in the grounds, sat down on a porch, and then, not knowing what he wanted there rose, but sat down again, thinking he might just as well sit there as anywhere else.  He did not care about going home, nor did he desire to go in again, it was all one to him.  He was not capable of considering what had happened; he did not want to think of it; neither did he wish to think of the future, for there was nothing to which he looked forward.

“But what, then, is it I am thinking of?” he queried, half aloud, and when he had heard his own voice, he thought:  “You can still speak, can you laugh?” And then he tried it; yes, he could laugh, and so he laughed loud, still louder, and then it occurred to him that it was very amusing to be sitting laughing here all by himself, and he laughed again.  But Hans, the comrade who had been sitting beside him, came out after him.