The schoolmaster, however, did not keep still, but went on talking of all that must be done to protect the flock from the wolves.

“I haven’t seen any wolves,” said the pastor.

“But I know they are on their way.”

“And you, Storm, are opening the door to them,” declared the minister, rising.  The schoolmaster’s talk had irritated him.  The blood mounted to his face, and he regained a little of his old dignity.

“My dear Storm, let us drop the subject,” he said.  Then turning to the housewife, he passed some pleasant remark about the last pretty bride she had dressed.  For Mother Stina dressed all the brides in the parish.

Peasant woman though she was, she understood how it must hurt him to be so cruelly reminded of his own impotence.  She wept from compassion, and could not answer him for the tears; so the pastor had to do most of the talking.

Meanwhile, he kept thinking:  “Oh, if I only had some of the power and the capacity of my younger days, I would convince this peasant at once of the wrong he is doing.”  With that he turned again to the schoolmaster: 

“Where did you get the money, Storm?” he asked.

“A company has been formed,” Storm explained; then he mentioned the names of several men who had pledged their support, just to show the parson that they were the kind of people who would harm neither the church nor its pastor.

“Is Ingmar Ingmarsson in it, too?” the parson exclaimed.  The effect of this was like a deathblow.  “And to think that I was as sure of Ingmar Ingmarsson as I had been of you, Storm!”

He said nothing more about this just then, but instead turned to Mother Stina and talked to her.  He must have seen that she was crying, but acted as if he had not noticed it.  In a little while he again addressed the schoolmaster.

“Drop it, Storm!” he begged.  “Drop it for my sake.  You wouldn’t like it if somebody put up another school next to yours.”

The schoolmaster sat gazing at the floor and reflected a moment.  Presently he said, almost reluctantly, “I can’t, Parson.”

For fully ten minutes there was a dead silence.  Where upon the pastor put on his overcoat and cap, and went toward the door.

The whole evening he had been trying to find words with which to prove to Storm that he was not only doing harm to the pastor with this undertaking, but he was undermining the parish.  Although thoughts and words kept crowding into his head, he could neither arrange them into an orderly sequence nor give utterance to them, because he was a broken man.  Walking toward the door, he espied Gertrude sitting in her corner playing with her blocks and bits of glass.  He stopped and looked at her.  Evidently she had not heard a word of the conversation, for her eyes sparkled with delight and her cheeks were like fresh-blown roses.

The pastor was startled at the sight of all this innocent happiness of the child in contrast to his own heart heaviness.