There was somebody!  There she was!

He hurried up.

No, it was that Jakobina Silla had been so much with in the summer.

There would at any rate be no harm in asking her.

“Isn’t Mrs. Holman at home this evening?” he asked, taking off his cap.

“No; she’s down at the fair, helping sell.”

The inference flashed with a passionate joy upon Nikolai; then he would be able to go in and see Silla.

“And so, when the cat’s away the mice will play,” continued Jakobina.  It was pretty well known that the smith came there for Silla’s sake, and her vexation at her three friends having got tickets, and not her, filled her with spiteful gaiety.  “Silla has taken a little trip into the town, too!” she added, laughing.

“Silla!”

“Yes, why shouldn’t she?  Mrs. Holman is sitting in the cold down there at a stall, kicking and stamping her feet; why shouldn’t her daughter do the same at the fair ball?”—­Jakobina was great at saying witty things—­“especially when she perhaps has some one who will both dance with her and treat her,” she said, letting off another shot, as Nikolai seemed to be struck dumb.

“Who’s put that lie into your head, girl?”

“If I’m lying, so’s Kristofa; and that Silla went down with her and Gunda a couple of hours ago I saw with my own eyes.  The one I mean can afford to give fair-tickets to either three or six.  But perhaps they were going to a prayer-meeting,” she added, winking with one eye.

“What nonsense are you talking!  You’d better take care what you say!” he exclaimed angrily.

“Ha, ha!” she laughed; “you’re not such a stranger to him—­he’s almost related.  We’re so grand, we are!  We heard enough of that from your mother last summer, when she got him to pay for that fine black dress, and they wouldn’t let her have credit for any more sewing materials for her shop.”

Nikolai had heard enough.

His mother had wrung his very blood from him, and then—­deceived him in spite of it.

He suddenly saw her before him in the cold light of indifference.

She had never been a mother to him, had never cared a pin’s head about him!  All this about a mother had only been something he had imagined.

He made a movement with his hands as if he were done with her.  The one she cared about, and had a mother’s feeling for, was this—­

He did not know whether he had thought the name himself, or whether Jakobina had said it; but it rang in his ears like the stroke of a hammer on a shining anvil, as he rushed down: 

“Ludvig Veyergang!”

He had robbed him of his mother from his earliest childhood.  Was he going to drag Silla away from him too?

The thought at last became too impossible, and he slackened his pace.

That Jakobina was always so full of gossip and lies!  This about Silla was all nonsense!  There was nothing so dreadful in the three girls having taken a trip down to see a little of the fair; and they made that sharp-tongued Jakobina, whom they did not want to have with them, think they were all three going to the ball.