CHAPTER VI.

Half a year later—­in the autumn it was (the confirmation had been postponed until then)—­the candidates for confirmation of the main parish sat in the parsonage servant’s hall, waiting examination, among them was Oyvind Pladsen and Marit Heidegards.  Marit had just come down from the priest, from whom she had received a handsome book and much praise; she laughed and chatted with her girl friends on all sides and glanced around among the boys.  Marit was a full-grown girl, easy and frank in her whole address, and the boys as well as the girls knew that Jon Hatlen, the best match in the parish, was courting her,—­well might she be happy as she sat there.  Down by the door stood some girls and boys who had not passed; they were crying, while Marit and her friends were laughing; among them was a little boy in his father’s boots and his mother’s Sunday kerchief.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” sobbed he, “I dare not go home again.”

And this overcame those who had not yet been up with the power of sympathy; there was a universal silence.  Anxiety filled their throats and eyes; they could not see distinctly, neither could they swallow; and this they felt a continual desire to do.

One sat reckoning over how much he knew; and although but a few hours before he had discovered that he knew everything, now he found out just as confidently that he knew nothing, not even how to read in a book.

Another summed up the list of his sins, from the time he was large enough to remember until now, and he decided that it would not be at all remarkable if the Lord decreed that he should be rejected.

A third sat taking note of all things about him:  if the clock which was about to strike did not make its first stroke before he could count twenty, he would pass; if the person he heard in the passage proved to be the gard-boy Lars, he would pass; if the great rain-drop, working its way down over the pane, came as far as the moulding of the window, he would pass.  The final and decisive proof was to be if he succeeded in twisting his right foot about the left,—­and this it was quite impossible for him to do.

A fourth was convinced in his own mind that if he was only questioned about Joseph in Bible history and about baptism in the Catechism, or about Saul, or about domestic duties, or about Jesus, or about the Commandments, or—­he still sat rehearsing when he was called.

A fifth had taken a special fancy to the Sermon on the Mount; he had dreamed about the Sermon on the Mount; he was sure of being questioned on the Sermon on the Mount; he kept repeating the Sermon on the Mount to himself; he had to go out doors and read over the Sermon on the Mount—­when he was called up to be examined on the great and the small prophets.

A sixth thought of the priest who was an excellent man and knew his father so well; he thought, too, of the school-master, who had such a kindly face, and of God who was all goodness and mercy, and who had aided so many before both Jacob and Joseph; and then he remembered that his mother and brothers and sisters were at home praying for him, which surely must help.