“I know, Halvor, that it doesn’t seem reasonable to you that a poor, uneducated blacksmith should have found the truth, when so many learned men have failed,” said the voice.

“I don’t see how you can be so sure of that,” Halvor questioned.

“It’s Hellgum talking to Halvor,” thought Karin, trying to close the window, which she was unable to reach.

“It has been said, as you know,” Hellgum went on, “that if somebody strikes us on one cheek we must turn the other cheek also, and that we should not resist evil, and other things of the same sort; all of which none of us can live up to.  Why, people would rob you of your house and home, they’d steal your potatoes and carry off your grain, if you failed to protect what was yours.  I guess they’d take the whole Ingmar Farm from you.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Halvor admitted.

“Well, then, I suppose Christ didn’t mean anything when He said all that; He was just talking into the air, eh?”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at!” said Halvor.

“Now here’s something to set you thinking,” Hellgum continued.  “We are supposed to be very far advanced in our Christianity.  There’s no one nowadays who steals, no one who commits murder or wrongs the widow and the fatherless, and of course no one hates or persecutes his neighbour any more, and it wouldn’t occur to any of us, who have such a good religion, to do any wrong!”

“There are many things that aren’t just as they ought to be,” drawled Halvor.  He sounded sleepy, and anything but interested.

“Now if you had a threshing machine that wouldn’t work, you’d find out what was wrong with it.  You wouldn’t give yourself any rest till you had discovered wherein it was faulty.  But when you see that it is simply impossible to get people to lead a Christian life, shouldn’t you try to find out whether there is anything the matter with Christianity itself?”

“I can’t believe there are any flaws in the teachings of Jesus,” said Halvor.

“No, they were unquestionably sound from the start; but it may be that they have become a little rusty, as it were, from neglect.  In any perfect mechanism, if a cog happens to slip—­only one tiny little cog—­instantly the whole machinery stops!”

He paused a moment as if searching for words and proofs.

“Now let me tell you what happened to me a few years ago,” he resumed.  “I then tried for the first time in my life to really live by the teachings.  Do you know what the result was?  I was at that time working in a factory.  When my fellow-workmen found out what manner of man I was, they let me do a good share of their work in addition to my own.  In thanks they took the job away from me by conniving to throw the blame on me for a theft committed by one of them.  I was arrested, of course, and sent to the penitentiary.”

“One doesn’t ordinarily run across such bad people,” returned Halvor indifferently.