When Gunner was absent Brita always ran the business in her own way.  Whenever old Corporal Felt would come stumbling in, tipsy and shaky, and ask for a bottle of beer, Brita would give him a blunt “No,” and when poor Kolbjoern’s Lena came and wanted to buy a fine brooch, Brita sent her home with several pounds of rye meal.  The peasant woman who dropped in to buy some light flimsy fabric was told to go home and weave suitable and durable cloth on her own loom.  And no children dared come into the shop to spend their poor coppers for candy and raisins when Brita was in charge there.

That day Brita had not many customers.  So for hours and hours she sat quite alone, staring into vacancy, despair burning in her eyes.  By and by she got up and took out a rope; then she moved a little stepladder from the shop into the back room.  After that she made a loop in one end of the rope, and fastened the other end to a hook in the ceiling.  Just as she was about to slip her head into the noose, she happened to look down.

At that moment the door opened and in walked a tall, dark man.  He had evidently entered the shop without her having heard him, and on finding no one in attendance, had stepped behind the counter and opened the door to the next room.

Brita quietly came down from the ladder.  The man did not speak, but withdrew into the shop, Brita slowly following him.  She had never seen the man before.  She noticed that he had black curly hair, throat whiskers, keen eyes, and big, sinewy hands.  He was well dressed, but his bearing was that of a labourer.  After seating himself on a rickety chair near the door, he began to stare hard at Brita.

By that time Brita was again standing behind the counter.  She did not ask him what he wanted; she only wished he would go away.  The man just stared and stared, never once taking his eyes off her.  Brita felt that she was being held by his gaze, and could not move.  Presently she grew impatient, and said, in her mind:  “What’s the use of your sitting there watching me?  Can’t you understand that I’m going to do what I want to do, anyhow, as soon as I’m left alone?  If this were only something that could be helped,” Brita argued mentally, “I wouldn’t mind your hindering me, but it can’t be remedied now.”

All the while the man sat gazing intently at her.

“Let me say to you that we Ingmars are not fitted to be shopkeepers,” Brita continued in her thoughts.  “You don’t know how happy we were, Gunner and I, till he took up with this business.  Folks certainly warned me against marrying him; they didn’t like him, on account of his black hair, his piercing eyes, and his sharp tongue.  But we two were fond of each other, you see, and there was never a cross word between us till Gunner took over the shop.  But since then all has not been well.  I want him to conduct the business in my way.  I can’t abide his selling wine and beer to drunkards, and it seems to me that he ought to encourage people in buying only such things as are useful and necessary; but Gunner thinks this a ridiculous notion.  Neither of us will give in to the other, so we are forever wrangling, and now he doesn’t care for me any more.”