He cautiously opened the door and tiptoed in.  Over against the wall stood Hellgum defending himself with an axe.  The three strangers—­ all of them big, powerful men—­were attacking him with clubs.  They carried no guns, so it was evident that they had come simply to give Hellgum a sound thrashing.  But because he had put up a good fight, they were so enraged that they went at him with intent to kill.  They hardly noticed Ingmar; they regarded him as nothing but a lank gawk of a boy who had just happened in.

For a moment Ingmar stood quietly looking on.  To him it was like a dream, wherein the thing one desires most suddenly appears without one’s knowing whence or how it came about.  Now and again Hellgum cried for help.

“Surely you can’t think I’m such a fool as to help you!” Ingmar said in his mind.

Suddenly one of the men dealt Hellgum a terrific blow on the head that made him let go his hold on the axe and fall to the floor.  Then the others threw down their clubs, drew their knives, and cast themselves upon him.  Instantly a thought flashed across Ingmar’s mind.  There was an old saying about the folk of his family, to the effect that every one of them was destined at some time or other during his lifetime to commit a dastardly and wrong deed.  Was it his turn now, he wondered?

All at once one of the assailants felt himself in the grip of a pair of strong arms that lifted him off his feet and threw him bodily out of the house; the second one had hardly time to think of rising before the same thing happened to him; and the third, who had managed to scramble to his feet, got a blow that sent him headlong after the others.

After Ingmar had thrown them all out, he went and stood in the doorway.  “Don’t you want to come back?” he challenged laughingly.  He would not have minded their attacking him; testing his strength was good sport.

The three brothers seemed quite ready to renew the fight, when one of them shouted that they had better take to their heels he had seen a figure coming along the path behind the elms.  They were furiously disappointed at not having finished Hellgum, and, as they turned to go, one of them ran back, pounced upon Ingmar, and stabbed him in the neck.

“That’s for meddling with our affair!” he shouted.

Ingmar sank down, and the man ran off, with a taunting laugh.

A few minutes later Karin came along and found Ingmar sitting on the doorstep with a wound in his neck, and inside she discovered Hellgum, who by that time had got to his feet again and was now leaning against the wall, axe in hand and his face covered with blood.  Karin had not seen the fleeing men; she supposed that Ingmar was the one who had attacked Hellgum and wounded him.  She was so horrified that her knees shook.  “No, no!” she thought, “it can’t be possible that any one in our family is a murderer.”  Then she recalled the story of her mother.  “That accounts for it,” she muttered, and hurried past Ingmar over to Hellgum.