All at once the noise died down, and Karin, as it were, came back to life.  The raw night wind came sweeping into the room; so after a little Karin decided to get up and stuff something into the broken window pane.  As she stepped out of the bed, her legs gave way, and she found that she could not walk.  She did not cry for help, but quietly laid down again.  “I’ll surely be able to walk when I feel more composed,” she thought.  In a few moments she made another attempt.  This time, too, her legs failed her, and she fell prone on the floor beside the bed.

In the morning, when people were astir in the house, the doctor was called in.  He was at a loss to understand what had come over Karin.  She did not appear to be ill, nor was she paralyzed.  He was of the opinion that her trouble had been brought on by fright.

“You’ll soon be all right again,” he assured her.  Karin listened to the doctor, but said nothing.  She felt certain that Elof had been in the room during the night, and that he was the cause of her trouble.  She also had the feeling that she would never recover from this shock.

All that morning she sat up in bed, and brooded.  She tried to reason out why God had let this trial come upon her.  She examined her conscience thoroughly, but could not discover that she had committed any special sin that merited such a terrible punishment.  “God is unjust to me,” she thought.

In the afternoon she was taken to Storm’s mission house, where at that time a lay preacher named Dagson led the meetings.  She hoped that he could tell her why she had been punished in this way.

Dagson was a popular speaker, and never had he had so many hearers as on that afternoon.  My, but what a gathering of people down at the mission house!  And no one talked of anything but what had happened in the night at Strong Ingmar’s hut.  The whole community was in a state of terror, and had turned out in full force, in order to hear the Word of God preached with a force that would annihilate their fears.  Hardly a quarter of the people could get inside; but windows and doors were wide open, and Dagson had such a powerful voice that he could be heard even by those on the outside.  Of course he knew what had occurred, and what the people wanted to hear.  He opened his address with a terror-striking word picture of hell and the prince of darkness.  He reminded them of the evil one who skulks about in the dark to capture souls, who lays the snares of sin and sets the traps of vice.  The people shuddered.  They seemed to see a world full of devils, tempting and enticing them to destruction.  Everything was a sin and a danger.  They were wandering among pitfalls, hunted and tormented like the wild beasts of the forest.  When Dagson talked in this strain, his voice pierced the room like a blasting wind, and his words were like tongues of fire.

All who heard Dagson’s sermon likened it to a roaring torrent of flame.  With all this talk about demons and fire and smoke, they had the same feeling as when trapped in a burning forest—­when the fire creeps along the moss upon which you are treading, and smoke clouds fill the air you breathe, and the heat singes your hair, while the roar of the fire fills your ears, and flying sparks set fire to your clothing.