Just then Karin came along with fresh coffee.  At sight of Halvor she brightened for an instant; then it occurred to her that his calling on her so soon after her husband’s death looked rather bad.  “If he is in such a hurry, people will surely say that he hadn’t given Elof proper care, and that he wanted him out of the way so he could marry me.”  She would rather he had waited two or three years before coming; that would have been long enough to make folks see that he had not been impatient for Elof’s departure.  “Why need he be in such haste?” she wondered.  “Surely he must know that I don’t want anyone but him.”

Every one had stopped talking the moment Karin appeared, wondering how she and Halvor would greet each other.  They barely touched hands. .At which the magistrate expressed his delight by a short whistle, while the inspector broke into a loud guffaw.  Haldor quietly turned to him.  “What are you laughing at?” he said.

The inspector was at a loss for an answer.  With Karin there he did not wish to say anything that might give offence.

“He is thinking of a hound that raises a hare and allows some one else to catch it,” remarked the innkeeper’s son, insinuatingly.

Karin turned blood red, but refilled the coffee cups.  “Berger Sven Persson and the rest of you will have to be satisfied with plain coffee,” she said.  “We no longer serve spirits to any one on this farm.”

“Nor do I at my home,” said the magistrate approvingly.

The inspector and the innkeeper’s son kept quiet; they understood that Sven Persson had scored heavily.

The magistrate straightway began to discourse on temperance and its salutary effects.  Karin listened to him with interest, and agreed with all that he said.  Seeing that this was the kind of talk that would appeal to her, the magistrate began to spread himself, and delivered long-winded harangue on the curse of liquor and drunkenness.  Karin recognized all her own thoughts on the subject, and was glad to find that they were shared by so intelligent a man as the magistrate.

In the middle of his monologue Berger Sven Persson glanced over at Halvor, who sat at the table, looking glum and sulky, his coffee cup untouched.

“It’s pretty rough on him,” thought Berger Sven Persson, “particularly if there’s any truth in what people say about his having given Elof a little lift on his way into the next world.  Anyway, he did Karin a good service by relieving her of that dreadful sot.”  And since the magistrate seemed to think that he had as good as won the game, he felt rather friendly toward Halvor.  Raising his cup, he said:  “Here’s to you, Halvor!  You certainly did Karin a good turn when you took her drunken sot of a husband off her hands.”

Halvor did not respond to the toast.  He sat looking the man straight in the eyes, and wondered how he should take this.

The inspector again burst out laughing.  “Yes, yes, a good turn,” he haw-hawed, “a real good turn.”