would eat raw potatoes, stale bread, sour cream and such-like for a whole week and admire himself as a Socrates; then his self-respect awoke and he began to storm again. He had to storm in order to get the salt-cellar placed on the table, to get the doors shut, to get the lamps filled with oil. The lamp-chimneys and wicks he had to clean himself, for that she could not learn.

"You are a cow, Kristin! You are a wretch who cannot value kindness. Do you like me to storm? Do you know that I abominate myself when I am obliged to get so excited. You make me bad, and you are a poisonous worm. I wish you had never been born, and lay in the depths of the earth. You are not a human being for you cannot learn; you are a cow, that you are! You will go? Yes, go to the deuce, where you came from!"

But Kristin never went. Once indeed she got as far as the steamer bridge, but turned round and entered the wood, whence the doctor had to fetch her home.

The doctor's only acquaintance was the postmaster at Fagervik, an old comrade of his student days, who came over every Saturday evening. Then the two drank and gossiped till past midnight and the postmaster remained till Sunday morning. They certainly did not look at life and their fellow-men from the same point of view, for the postmaster was a decided member of the Left Party, and the doctor was a sceptic, but their talk suited each other so well, that their conversation was like a part-song, or piece of music, for two voices, in which the voices, although varying, yet formed a harmony. The doctor, with his wider, mental outlook, sometimes expressed disapproval of his companion's sentiments somewhat as follows:

"You party-men are like one-eyed cats. Some see only with the left eye, others with the right, and therefore you can never see stereoscopically, but always flat and one-sidedly."

They were both great newspaper readers and followed the course of all questions with eagerness. The most burning question, however, was the religious one, for the political ones were settled by votes in the Reichstag and came to an end, but the religious questions never ended. The postmaster hated pietists and temperance advocates.

"Why the deuce do you hate the pietists?" the doctor would say. "What harm have they done you? Let them enjoy themselves; it doesn't affect me."

"They are all hypocrites," said the postmaster dogmatically.

"No," answered the doctor, "you cannot judge, for you have never been a pietist, but I have, and I was—deuce take me—no hypocrite. But I don't do it again. That is to say—one never knows, for it comes over one, or does not—it all depends on——"

"On what?"

"Hard to say. Pietism, for the rest, is a kind of European Buddhism. Both regard the world as an unclean place of punishment for the soul. Therefore they seek to counteract material influences, and in that they are not so wrong. That they do not succeed is obvious, but the struggle itself deserves respect. Their apparent hypocrisy results from the fact that they do not reach the goal they aim at, and their life always halts behind their teaching. That the priests of the church hate them is clear, for our married dairy farmers, card players and good diners do not love these apostles who show their unnecessariness and their defects. You know our clergy out there on the islands; I need not gossip about them, for you know. There you have the hypocrites, especially among the unfortunates, who after going through their examination have lost faith in all doctrines."

"Yes, but the pietists are enemies to culture."

"No, I don't find that. When I came to this island it was inhabited by three hundred besotted beasts who led the life of devils. And now—you see for yourself. They are not lovable nor lively, but they are, at any rate, quiet, so that one can sleep at night; and they don't fight, so that one can walk about the island without fear for one's life and limbs. In a word, the simplest blessings of civilisation were the distinct result of the erection of the prayer-house."

"The prayer-house which you never enter!"

"No, I don't belong to that fold. But have you ever been there?"

"I? No!"

"You should hear them once at any rate."

"Why?"

"You daren't!"

"Daren't! Is it dangerous?"

"So they say!"

"Not for me."

"Shall we wager a barrel of punch?"

The postmaster reflected an instant, not so much on the punch as on the doctor's suspecting him of cowardice.

"Done! I will go there on Friday. And you can carry the punch home in a boat, if you see anything go wrong with me."

The day came and the postmaster ate his dinner with the doctor, before he took his way, as agreed, to the prayer-house. He had told no one of his intention, partly because he feared that the preacher might aim at him, partly because he did not wish to get the reputation of being a pietist. After dinner he borrowed a box of snuff to keep himself awake, in spite of the doctor's assurance that he would not have any chance of sleeping. And so he went.

The doctor walked about his garden waiting for the result of the experiment to which many a stronger man than the postmaster had succumbed. He waited for an hour and a half; he waited two hours; he waited three. Then at last he saw the congregation coming out—a sign that it was over. But the postmaster did not appear. The doctor became uneasy. Another hour passed, and at last he saw his friend coming out of the wood. He came with a somewhat artificial liveliness and there was something forced in the springiness of his gait. When he saw the doctor, he made a slight wriggling movement with his legs, and shrugged his shoulders as though his clothes were too tight for him.

"Well?" asked the doctor. "It was tedious, wasn't it?"

"Yes," was the only answer.

They went down to the pavilion and took their seats opposite each other, although the postmaster was shy of showing his face, into which a new expression had come.

"Give me a pinch of snuff," said the doctor slyly.

The postmaster drew out the snuff-box, which had been untouched.

"You did not sleep?" resumed the doctor.

The postmaster felt embarrassed.

"Well, old fellow, you are not cheerful! What is the matter? Stop a minute!" The doctor indicated with his forefinger the space between his friend's eyes and nose as though he wished to show him something, "I believe ... you have been crying!"

"Nonsense!" answered the postmaster, and straightened himself up. "But, at any rate, you know I am not easily befooled, but as I said that fellow is a wizard."

"Tell us, tell us! Fancy your believing in wizards!"

"Yes, it was so strange." He paused for a while and continued:

"Can you imagine it? He preached, as was to be expected, especially to me. And in the middle of his preaching he told me all the secrets which, like everyone else, I have kept most jealously hidden from my childhood's days and earlier. I felt that I reddened, and that the whole congregation looked at me as though they knew it also, which is quite impossible. They nodded, keeping time with his words and looking at me simultaneously. Yes, they turned round on their seats. Even regarded as witchcraft it was——"

"Yes, yes, I know it, and therefore I take care. What it is I don't know, but it is something which I keep at arm's length. And it is the same with Swedenborg. I sat once in an ante-room waiting for admission. Behind me stood a book-case from which a book projected and prevented me from leaning my head back. I took the book down and it was part of Swedenborg's 'Arcana Coelestia.' I opened it at random and—can you imagine it? in two minutes a subject which just then occupied my thoughts was explained to me in such detail and with an almost alarming amount of expert knowledge, that it was quite uncanny. In two minutes I was quite clear regarding myself and my concerns."

"Well, tell us about it."

"No, I won't. You know yourself that the life