“Ingmar first!” cried Hellgum.

“The murderer should not be helped before his victim,” said Karin.

“Ingmar first!  Ingmar first!” Hellgum kept shouting.  He was so excited that he raised his axe against her.  “He has fought the would-be murderers and saved my life!” he said.

When Karin finally understood, and turned to help Ingmar, he was gone.  She saw him stagger across the yard, and ran after him, calling, “Ingmar!  Ingmar!”

Ingmar went on without even turning his head.  But she soon caught up with him.  Placing her hand on his arm, she said: 

“Stop, Ingmar, and let me bind up your wound!”

He shook off her hand and went ahead like a blind man, following neither road nor bypath.  The blood from his open wound trickled down underneath his clothes into one of his shoes.  With every step that he made, blood was pressed out of the shoe, leaving a red track on the ground.

Karin followed him, wringing her hands.  “Stop, Ingmar, stop!” she implored.  “Where are you going?  Stop, I say!”

Ingmar wandered on, straight into the wood, where there was no one to succor him.  Karin kept her eyes fixed on his shoe, which was oozing blood.  Every second the footprints were becoming redder and redder.

“He’s going into the forest to lie down and bleed to death!” thought Karin.  “God bless you, Ingmar, for helping Hellgum!” she said gently.  “It took a man’s courage to do that, and a man’s strength, too!”

Ingmar tramped straight ahead, paying no heed whatever to his sister.  Then Karin ran past him and planted herself in his way.  He stepped aside without so much as glancing at her.  “Go and help Hellgum!” he muttered.

“Let me explain, Ingmar!  Halvor and I were very sorry for what we said to you this morning, and I was just on’ my way to Hellgum to let him know that, whichever way it turned out, you were to keep the sawmill.”

“Now you can give it to Hellgum,” was Ingmar’s answer.  He walked on, stumbling over stones and tree stumps.

Karin kept close behind, trying her best to conciliate him.  “Can’t you forgive me for my mistake of a moment in thinking you had fought with Hellgum?  I could hardly have thought differently.”

“You were very ready to believe your own brother a murderer,” Ingmar retorted, without giving her a look.  He still walked on.  When the grass blades he had trampled down came up again, blood dripped from them.  It was only after Karin had noticed the peculiar way in which Ingmar had spoken Hellgum’s name, that she began to realize how he hated the preacher.  At the same time she saw what a big thing he had done.

“Every one will be singing your praises for what you did to-day, Ingmar; it will be known far and wide,” she said.  “You don’t want to die and miss all the honours, do you?”

Ingmar laughed scornfully.  Then he turned toward her a face that was pale and haggard.  “Why don’t you go home, Karin?” he said.  “I know well enough whom you would prefer to help.”  His steps became more and more uncertain, and now, where he had walked, there was a continuous streak of blood on the ground.