“God knows I am!” the old man burst forth.  “I only wish I had never come back at all!”

“Why, what’s gone wrong at home?”

“How can you ask!  You must know as well as I that Hellgum has been raising the deuce around here.”

Ingmar answered that, on the contrary, he had heard that Hellgum had become a big man.

“Yes, he has grown so big and strong that he’s been able to upset the whole parish,” Strong Ingmar sneered.

It seemed strange to Ingmar that the old man never evinced a particle of affection for any of his own kin.  He cared for nobody and for nothing save the Ingmarssons and the Ingmar Farm.  Therefore Ingmar felt that he must stand up for the son-in-law.

“I think his doctrine a good one,” he said.

“Oh, you do, do you?” snapped the old man; and he gave him a withering look.  “Do you think Big Ingmar would have thought so?”

Ingmar replied that his father would have upheld any one who worked for righteousness.

“It’s your belief, then, that Big Ingmar would have approved of calling all persons who do not belong to Hellgum’s band devils and anti-Christs, and that he would have refused to associate with his old friends because they held to their old faith?”

“I hardly think that such people as Hellgum and Halvor and Karin would behave in that way,” said Ingmar.

“Just you try to oppose them once, and you’ll soon hear what they think of you!”

Ingmar cut off a big corner of his sandwich and stuffed his mouth full, so he would not have to talk.  It irritated him to see Strong Ingmar in such bad humour.

“Heigho, hum!  It’s a queer world,” sighed the old man.  “Here you sit, the son of Big Ingmar, with nothing to say, while my Anna Lisa and her husband are living on the fat of your land.  The best people in the parish bow and scrape to them, and every day they’re being feted, here, there, and everywhere.”

Ingmar kept on munching and swallowing.  There was nothing he could say.  Strong Ingmar, however, went at him again.

“Yes, it’s a fine doctrine that Hellgum is spreading!  That’s why half the parish has gone over to him.  No one has ever had such absolute influence over the people, not even Strong Ingmar himself.  He separates children from their parents by preaching that those who are of his fold must not live among sinners.  Hellgum need only beckon, and brother leaves brother, friend leaves friend, and the lover deserts his betrothed.  He has used his power to create strife and dissension in every household.  Of course, Big Ingmar would have been pleased to death with that sort of thing!  Doubtless he would have backed Hellgum up in all this!  I can just picture him doing it!”

Ingmar looked up and down; he wanted to get away.  He knew, to be sure, that the old man had been drawing heavily on his imagination, but all the same this talk depressed him.