There was a short pause of surprise before they all rushed upon him.

But Nikolai swung the big file about him like a madman.  He felt with frenzied pleasure, how he would strike—­strike down the whole smithy one by one until justice was done him.  Wait a little, he had only begun yet—­a hammer was lying on the block.

But the men in the smithy did not wait, and the next moment it was he who lay on his back, his eyes blinded by blue and yellow sparks, and as many of his adversaries around and upon him as there was room for; he should be held fast and sent about his business now—­he had used a weapon!

He felt a powerful grasp on his coat collar, a grasp that included the skin, felt himself dragged up and, without a pause, half carried, half flung, out of the smithy door.

It was Anders Berg, who had exerted his power to rescue him, and who—­still only slightly relaxing his hold—­led him out of the gate.

It was his farewell to the smithy.

“I’ll just tell you something,” exclaimed Anders Berg later, when the commotion had subsided; he was still red in the face and spoke loudly, while he hammered cold.

“There’s come a wrong bend in Nikolai; but it isn’t his fault!”

The hammer rang on the iron.

Nikolai did not take a lodging anywhere that evening; he was too bruised and dirty for that, his clothes too torn and ragged, and, more than anything else, he felt too sore to meet people now that he had left the smithy in such a way.

When night fell, he had once more taken up his familiar quarters in one of the stacks of planks down at the timber-yard.  There, in one of the deep square spaces he lay and looked up at the stars and thought how entertaining the world had become!

CHAPTER V

AMONG THE UNEMPLOYED

Nikolai was out of work, that was very certain.

It never entered his head to present himself at any other smithy:  they all knew each other too well for that.  And even at barge-builder Hansen’s, where he got a lodging up in the tool-loft, and his food on the days when he got a chance of doing something useful, they wanted to know now why he had left his trade.  As if that were any business of theirs!

So Nikolai suddenly disappeared.

On the quay, the harbour and the steamers, a fellow with his hands could surely get on just as well as any other.

It was with fresh and dauntless courage, though with a stomach not overladen with food during the last few days, that he went down there.

He was received with a certain appreciative admiration.  He found that it was a well-known fact that he had had an encounter with the police, and had been sufficiently dexterous to get off without their being able to fix anything upon him; the news of such an exploit travels like wild-fire in that world, and spreads a halo around its subject.