“Do you think I’m going to die, Karin?” he moaned.

“No, dear, of course not,” Karin assured him.

“I didn’t know what they were giving me.”

“Thank God for that!” said Karin fervently.

“If I die, write to my sisters and tell them I didn’t know it was liquor,” wailed the boy.

“Yes, dear,” soothed Karin.

“Really and truly I didn’t know—­I swear it!”

All day Ingmar lay in a raging fever.  “Please don’t tell father about it!” he raved.

“Father will never know of it,” she said.

“But suppose I die, then father would surely find it out, and I would be shamed before him.”

“But it wasn’t your fault, child.”

“Maybe father will think that I shouldn’t have taken what Elof offered me?  Don’t you suppose the whole parish must know that I have been full?” he asked.  “What do the hired men say, and what does old Lisa say, and Strong Ingmar?”

“They’re not saying anything,” Karin replied.

“You will have to tell them how it happened.  We were at the tavern in Karmsund, where Elof and some of his pals had been drinking the whole night.  I was sitting in a corner on a bench, half asleep, when Elof came over and roused me.  ‘Wake up, Ingmar,’ he said very pleasantly, ’and I’ll give you something that will make you warm.  Drink this,’ he urged, holding a glass to my lips.  ’It’s only hot water with a little sugar in it.’  I was shivering with the cold when I awoke and, as I drank the stuff, I only noticed that it was hot and sweet.  But he had gone and mixed something strong with it!  Oh, what will father say?”

Then Karin opened the door leading to the living-room, where Elof still lingered over his meal.  She felt that it would be well for him to hear this.

“If only father were living, Karin, if only father were living!”

“What then, Ingmar?”

“Don’t you think he’d kill him?”

Elof broke into a loud laugh, and when the boy heard him, he turned so pale with fright that Karin promptly closed the door again.

It had this good effect upon Elof, at all events:  he put up no objection when Karin decided to take the boy to Storm’s school.

***

Soon after Halvor had received the watch, his shop was always full of people.  Every farmer in the parish, when in town, would stop at Halvor’s shop in order to hear the story of Big Ingmar’s watch.  The peasants in their long white fur coats stood hanging over the counter by the hour, their solemn, furrowed faces turned toward Halvor as he talked to them.  Sometimes he would take out the watch, and show them the dented case and the cracked face.

“So it was there the blow caught him,” the peasants would say.  And they seemed to see before them what had happened when Big Ingmar was hurt.  “It is a great thing for you, Halvor, to have that watch!”

When Halvor was showing the watch he would never let it out of his hands, but would always keep a tight grip on the chain.