If she should take the letter and read it aloud, then the stream of poison would be turned.  The venom would sprinkle upon her.  The horror of death came over her.  She did not dare.  She half wished that an insolent hand had been thrust into her pocket and had drawn out the letter.  She could not give herself as a prize.  Within the workshop was heard a shoemaker’s hammer.  Did no one hear how it hammered in triumph?  She had heard that hammering and had been vexed by it the whole day.  But none of the women understood it.  Omniscient God, hast Thou no servant who could read hearts?  She would gladly accept her sentence, if only she did not need to confess.  She wished to hear some one say:  “Who has given you the idea to lie before God?” She listened for the sound of the young men’s footsteps in order to fall down and die.

***

Several years after this a divorced woman was married to a shoemaker, who had been apprentice to her husband.  She had not wished it, but had been drawn to it, as a pickerel is drawn to the side of a boat when it has been caught on the line.  The fisherman lets it play.  He lets it rush here and there.  He lets it believe it is free.  But when it is tired out, when it can do no more, then he drags with a light pull, then he lifts it up and jerks it down into the bottom of the boat before it knows what it is all about.

The wife of the absconded shoemaker had dismissed her apprentice and wished to live alone.  She had wished to show her husband that she was innocent.  But where was her husband?  Did he not care for her faithfulness.  She suffered want.  Her child went in rags.  How long did her husband think that she could wait?  She was unhappy when she had no one upon whom she could depend.

Erikson succeeded.  He had a shop in the town.  His shoes stood on glass shelves behind broad plate-glass windows.  His workshop grew.  He hired an apartment and put plush furniture in the parlor.  Everything waited only for her.  When she was too wearied of poverty, she came.

She was very much afraid in the beginning.  But no misfortunes befell her.  She became more confident as time went on and more happy.  She had people’s regard, and knew within herself that she had not deserved it.  That kept her conscience awake, so that she became a good woman.

Her first husband, after some years, came back to the house in the suburbs.  It was still his, and he settled down again there and wished to begin work.  But he got no work, nor would anybody have anything to do with him.  He was despised, while his wife enjoyed great honor.  It was nevertheless he who had done right, and she who had done wrong.

The husband kept his secret, but it almost suffocated him.  He felt how he sank, because everybody considered him bad.  No one had any confidence in him, no one would trust any work to him.  He took what company he could get, and learned to drink.

While he was going down hill, the Salvation Army came to the town.  It hired a big hall and began its work.  From the very first evening all the loafers gathered at the meetings to make a disturbance.  When it had gone on for about a week, Matts Wik came too to take part in the fun.