His sister waited at the parsonage until he came from the examination, worn out and with eyes red with weeping.  Once more they went aside and whispered.  I remember nothing more of her than that she held her head down and wept a great deal.

It was in the winter that he was to be executed.  The announcement was made at such short notice that every one in the house had to bestir himself—­father was to deliver an exhortation at the place of execution, and the Dean, whose parishioner the condemned man was, together with the bailiff, had arranged to come to us the day before.

Peer and his warders and a friend, his instructor during the time of his imprisonment, schoolmaster Jakobsen, were to sleep down in the schoolhouse, which was part of the farm property belonging to the old parsonage.  Meals were to be carried from our house to the prisoner and Jakobsen.

I remember that they came in the morning in two boat-loads from Molde:  the Dean, the bailiff, the military escort, and the condemned man.  But I had to sit in the old schoolhouse, and not even later in the day was I allowed to go down to where they were.

This prohibition made the whole proceeding the more mysterious.  It grew dark early.  The sea ran black against a whitish and in some places bare-swept beach.  The ragged clouds chased each other across the sky.  We were afraid a storm was coming on.  Then one of the parsonage chimneys caught on fire, and most of the soldiers came rushing up to offer help.  The great fire-ladder was brought from under the storehouse.  It was unusually heavy and clumsy, so it was difficult to get it raised, till father broke into the midst of the crowd, ordered them all to stand back, and set it up by himself.  This is still remembered in the parish; and also that the bailiff, an active little fellow, took a bucket in each hand and went up the ladder till he reached the turf roof.  The black fjord, the hurrying clouds, the menace of the coming day, the blaze of the fire, the bustle and din...and then the silence afterwards!  People whispered as they moved about the rooms and out in the yard, whence they looked down upon the schoolhouse-prison where the steady light burned.

Schoolmaster Jacobsen was sitting there now with his friend.  They were singing and praying together, I heard from those who had been down in that direction.  Peer’s family came in the evening in a boat, went up to see him, and took leave of him.  I heard how dauntless he was in his confidence that the next day he would be with God, and how beautifully he talked to his people, and especially how he begged them to take an affectionate greeting to his mother, and be good to her as long as she lived.  Some said she had come in the boat with the rest, but would not go up to see him.  That was not true, any more than that some of them were at the execution the next day, which was also reported.