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It was her father who spoke last. Though the words came gently, they did not hurt the less.

“I will not desert you!” she stammered.

“You must not say that,” he answered, more gravely than before, “for you have done it already.”

Mildrid felt that this was true, and at the same time that it was not true, but she could not put her feeling into words.

Her mother went on: “Of what good has it all been, the love that we have shown our children, and the fear of God that we have taught them? In the first temptation–” for her daughter’s sake she could say no more.

But Mildrid could bear it no longer. She threw her arms over the table, laid her head on them, her face towards her father, and sobbed.

Neither father nor mother was capable of adding by another reproachful word to the remorse she seemed to feel. So there was silence.

It might have lasted long–but Hans Haugen saw from where he sat that she was in need of help. His hunter’s eye had caught every look, seen the movement of their lips, seen her silent struggle; now he saw her throw herself on the table, and he jumped up, and soon his light foot was heard in the passage. He knocked; they all looked up, but no one said, “Come in!” Mildrid half rose, blushing through her tears; the door opened, and Hans with his gun and dog stood there, pale but quite composed. He turned and shut the door, while the dog, wagging its tail, went up to Mildrid. Hans had been too preoccupied to notice that it had followed him in.

“Good morning!” said he. Mildrid fell back on her seat, drew a long breath, and looked at him with relief in her eyes; her fear, her bad conscience–all gone! She was right, yes; she was right–let come now whatever it pleased God to send!

No one had answered Hans’s greeting, nor had he been asked to come forward.

“I am Hans Haugen,” he said quietly; lowered his gun and stood holding it. After the parents had exchanged looks once or twice, he went on, but with a struggle: “I came down with Mildrid, for if she has done wrong, it was my fault.”

Something had to be said. The mother looked at the father, and at last he said that all this had happened without their knowing anything of it, and that Mildrid could give them no explanation of how it had come about. Hans answered that neither could he. “I am not a boy,” he said, “for I am twenty-eight; but yet it came this way, that I, who never cared for any one before, could think of nothing else in the world from the time I saw her. If she had said No–well, I can’t tell–but I shouldn’t have been good for much after that.”

The quiet, straightforward way he said this made a good impression. Mildrid trembled; for she felt that this gave things a different look. Hans had his cap on, for in their district it was not the custom for a passer-by to take off his hat when he came in; but now he took it off unconsciously, hung it on the barrel of his gun, and crossed his hands over it. There was something about his whole appearance and behaviour that claimed consideration.

“Mildrid is so young,” said her mother; “none of us had thought of anything like this beginning with her already.”

“That is true enough, but to make up I am so much older,” he answered; “and the housekeeping at home, in my house, is no great affair; it will not task her too hard–and I have plenty of help.”

The parents looked at each other, at Mildrid, at him. “Do you mean her to go home with you?” the father asked incredulously, almost ironically.

“Yes,” said Hans; “it is not the farm that I am coming after.” He reddened, and so did Mildrid.