Was she anything for Nikolai—­that awkward, dark, long girl, who ran about in that bodice that was too short for her, looking like a half-peeled, bent prawn in the back, and went balancing along the edge of the gutter, as if she were going to be a tightrope dancer—­without any education?  Upon her word, if it had been any other than Ludvig Veyergang, she would have had him peeping after her at every corner.

“But, do you know, Nikolai, it suddenly came into my head while he stood there, that here was the person who both could and would help me with those fifteen dollars I still want so badly.  But he was gone before I could collect myself.”

“Him?  N—­no, mother!  I’ll get them for you, if you’ll only wait a little; and I think you can use my money as well as his.”

“Well, if I hadn’t got you, Nikolai!” sighed Barbara, moved; “and now you shall have some coffee that’s good, and new cinnamon-sticks with it, that I didn’t get sold to-day.”

“No, thanks all the same, mother,” he answered, gloomily:  he was already at the door.

Later in the evening he succeeded in meeting Silla.  She was so merry and laughing this evening.

“I ran away; didn’t look at him at all.  Would you have liked me to stay, perhaps?” she said, playfully.

He was disarmed for the moment, she laughed so confidingly.

But as he went down, he still saw Veyergang’s insolent, half-closed eyes, and the curl coming out beneath his hat, and—­he could not help it—­he felt as if it were twined round his finger!

That she chattered so gaily did not please him, nor yet that whenever he made time to go up in the evening she came down breathless from the garden, and was always full of whether young Veyergang had been there or not, what he had said, and what she had thought, and whether Kristofa had afterwards agreed or disagreed with her.  It was as if she could not talk of anything else!

Yet it was not so bad, he supposed, so long as it was she herself who chattered and talked about it to him.

But the perspiration would stream from him in the smithy, when he stood and thought about it all up there.  He felt as though he were under a screw.

Why should not the poor man’s possession be left in peace?  Here he was toiling away, and would give every drop of blood in his body to be able to marry; and that other one, who had his pockets full, and could have any fine lady for the asking—­they were worse than wild beasts and murderers!  And amidst all this the time was passing.

He had blessed both the autumn mud and darkness, which put an end to all the running about in the evening; and now winter days and snow had come.  When he reckoned up—­and he was always reckoning—­he found that by the New Year he would be worth seventy-five specie-dollars—­what he had almost starved himself to save—­and of these his mother had had forty-five, and since then thirteen more.  He had made a half bargain about a room with a kitchen at a fair price per month, and what he wanted for the house, too.  The last time he had lent his mother money, she had said that he need not be afraid, she was selling the goods and sweeping in the profits.