home I always had a feeling of cold and fright, and as if all gladness
were over with Susanna at the parsonage. It was therefore not surprising
that we were always longing to be together.

As we grew older, opportunities were less frequent, but the longing only
became the greater by being repressed, and the moments we could spend
together gradually acquired, unknown to us, another than the old
childish character. To talk to her had now become a solace to me, and
many a day I haunted the parsonage lands, only to get a glimpse of her.

I was about sixteen, when one morning, as I passed the parsonage garden,
she beckoned to me, and handed me a flower over the wall, and then she
hastily ran in, right across the carrot beds, as if she were afraid some
one would see.

It was the first time it had struck me how beautiful she was, and for
many a day I thought of her as she stood there in the garden among the
bushes with the morning sun shining down upon her.




CHAPTER III

_THE SERVANTS' HALL_


The ghostly spirit which ran through our house, first had free outlet
down in the servants' hall, when the men and maids, and the wayfarers
who were putting up for the night, sat in the evening in the red glow