He had always been afraid when he was alone in the darkness of the forest.  He liked the open sea and the bare rocks.  Spirits and phantoms crept about among the trees.

Suddenly he heard who it was who spoke in the storm.  It was God, the great Avenger, the God of justice.  He was hunting him for the sake of his comrade.  He demanded that he should deliver up the murderer to His vengeance.

Then Tord began to speak in the midst of the storm.  He told God what he had wished to do, but had not been able.  He had wished to speak to Berg Rese and to beg him to make his peace with God, but he had been too shy.  Bashfulness had made him dumb.  “When I heard that the earth was ruled by a just God,” he cried, “I understood that he was a lost man.  I have lain and wept for my friend many long nights.  I knew that God would find him out, wherever he might hide.  But I could not speak, nor teach him to understand.  I was speechless, because I loved him so much.  Ask not that I shall speak to him, ask not that the sea shall rise up against the mountain.”

He was silent, and in the storm the deep voice, which had been the voice of God for him, ceased.  It was suddenly calm, with a sharp sun and a splashing as of oars and a gentle rustle as of stiff rushes.  These sounds brought Unn’s image before him.—­The outlaw cannot have anything, not riches, nor women, nor the esteem of men.  —­If he should betray Berg, he would be taken under the protection of the law.—­But Unn must love Berg, after what he had done for her.  There was no way out of it all.

When the storm increased, he heard again steps behind him and sometimes a breathless panting.  Now he did not dare to look back, for he knew that the white monk went behind him.  He came from the feast at Berg Rese’s house, drenched with blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his forehead.  And he whispered:  “Denounce him, betray him, save his soul.  Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared.  Leave him to the slow torture of the rack, that his soul may have time to repent.”

Tord ran.  All this fright of what was nothing in itself grew, when it so continually played on the soul, to an unspeakable terror.  He wished to escape from it all.  As he began to run, again thundered that deep, terrible voice, which was God’s.  God himself hunted him with alarms, that he should give up the murderer.  Berg Rese’s crime seemed more detestable than ever to him..  An unarmed man had been murdered, a man of God pierced with shining steel.  It was like a defiance of the Lord of the world.  And the murderer dared to live!  He rejoiced in the sun’s light and in the fruits of the earth as if the Almighty’s arm were too short to reach him.

He stopped, clenched his fists and howled out a threat.  Then he ran like a madman from the wood down to the valley.

***

Tord hardly needed to tell his errand; instantly ten peasants were ready to follow him.  It was decided that Tord should go alone up to the cave, so that Berg’s suspicions should not be aroused.  But where he went he should scatter peas, so that the peasants could find the way.