The plowman walked along, his lips moving all the while.  He actually imagined that he saw before him the face of his father.  “I shall have to lay the whole case before the old man, frankly and clearly,” he remarked to himself, “so he can advise me.”

“’Winter had come and gone, yet nothing was changed.  I felt at times that if Brita were to keep on being unhappy I might better give her up and send her home.  However, it was too late to think of that.  Then, one evening, early in May, we discovered that she had quietly slipped away.  We searched for her all through the night, and in the morning one of the housemaids found her.’

“I find it hard now to continue, and take refuge in silence.  Then father exclaims:  ‘In God’s name, she wasn’t dead, was she?’ ’No, not she,’ I say, and father notes the tremor in my voice.  ’Was the child born?’ asks father.  ‘Yes,’ I reply, ’and she had strangled it.  It was lying dead beside her.’  ’But she couldn’t have been in her right mind.’  ‘Oh, she knew well enough what she vas about!’ I say.  ’She did it to get even with me for forcing myself upon her.  Still she would never have done this thing had I married her.  She said she had been thinking that since I did not want my child honourably born, I should have no child.’  Father is dumb with grief, but by and by he says to me:  ’Would you have been glad of the child, little Ingmar?’ ‘Yes,’ I answer.  ’Poor boy!  It’s a shame that you should have fallen in with a bad woman!  She is in prison, of course,’ says father.  ‘She was sent up for three years.’  ’And it’s because of this that no man will let you marry a daughter of his?’ ‘Yes, but I haven’t asked anyone, either.’  ’And this is why you have no standing in the parish?’ ’They all think it ought not to have gone that way for Brita.  Folks say that if I had been a sensible man, like yourself, I would have talked to her and found out what was troubling her.’  ’It’s not so easy for a man to understand a bad woman!’ says father.  ’No, father, Brita was not bad, but she was a proud one!’ ‘It comes to the same thing,’ says father.

“Now that father seems to side with me, I say:  ’There are many who think I should have managed it in such a way that no one would have known but that the child was born dead.’  ’Why shouldn’t she take her punishment?’ says father.  ’They say if this had happened in your time, you would have made the servant who found her keep her tongue in her head so that nothing could have leaked out.’  ’And in that case would you have married her?’ ’Why then there would have been no need of my marrying her.  I would have sent her back to her parents in a week or so and the banns annulled, on the grounds that she was not happy with us.’  ’That’s all very well, but no one can expect a young chap like you to have an old man’s head on him.’  ‘The whole parish thinks that I behaved badly toward Brita.’  ’She has done worse in bringing disgrace upon honest folk.’  ’But I made her take me.’  ‘She