Had she known or understood what it was to love anybody before just now?  And perhaps it was too late!

The thought filled her with despair again, and wild pictures arose in her mind—­Veyergang falling and lying stretched upon the snow, and then Nikolai’s arms with the handcuffs on them stretching up out of the factory waterfall.

She lay awake until the morning and saw the same things—­the handcuffs in the waterfall, and Veyergang turning away from the blow and falling; and then the whole thing over again—­and again.

She sat there the whole day until dusk.  Then her restlessness drove her down to the police-station.

There the gas was already lighted in the passages, and there were so many doors through which busy men in uniform were going in and out.  At the entrances several people were standing waiting.

She had not the courage to ask.

For a long time she walked restlessly in the thickly-falling snow round the building.

At last she felt that she must go in; and in a condition which made her blind to her surroundings, she at length stood patiently, white and covered with snow, at the gate of the prison.

When at length it opened, she wanted to go in.

“What do you want?”

“To hear about Nikolai.”

“Nikolai?  What Nikolai?”

“He who came in here last night.”

“You don’t mean him, the murderer?  Are you his sister?”

“No.”

“That’s a good thing, for the bad fellow hasn’t got long to live.”  He made an expressive movement with his hand across his throat.  “The man he attacked is dead—­died at midday, and the murderer is now sitting in chains.”

Silla did not know how it was that the door was shut behind her again, and did not feel that it was snowing thickly and silently, while the light from the lamps shone through a veil of snow—­did not know how she had reached the bridge again.

That was where she ought to be.

Nikolai was sitting down there with handcuffs on, and stretching up his hands, and crying—­crying to her!

* * * * *

The next morning a bit of a dress was seen sticking up out of the loose snow in the dam.  Her skull had been broken in the high fall from the bridge against the edge of the ice.

* * * * *

It was proved that young Veyergang’s death had been caused directly by the blow that had been dealt him which had penetrated to the brain.

And the impression was not to be softened by Nikolai’s behaviour before the court.  He stood there with wild sorrow in his heart over Silla’s death, and answered that if Veyergang had had seven lives, he would have taken them all.

When questioned as to his parents, he at first declared that he had never known any; but when pressed further, he exclaimed, pointing at a large-boned woman who was sitting, crying on a bench: