"No, thank you! Go home and be stared at and play the penitent--no,
thank you! I'd rather the strangers got what's left. And mother--
well, if she's lived without my help, I suppose she can die without
it too. Well, I must be getting home. I wonder what's become of the
future master of Stone Farm?" She laughed loudly.

Lasse would have taken his oath that she had been quite sober, and
yet she walked unsteadily as she went behind the calves' stables to
look for her son. It was on his lips to ask whether she would not
take the hymn-book with her, but he refrained. She was not in the
mood for it now, and she might mock God; so he carefully wrapped up
the book and put it away in the green chest.

* * * * *

At the far end of the cow-stable a space was divided off with
boards. It had no door, and the boards were an inch apart, so that
it resembled a crate. This was the herdsman's room. Most of the
space was occupied by a wide legless bedstead made of rough boards
knocked together, with nothing but the stone floor to rest on. Upon
a deep layer of rye straw the bed-clothes lay in a disordered heap,
and the thick striped blankets were stiff with dried cow-dung, to
which feathers and bits of straw had adhered.

Pelle lay curled up in the middle of the bed with the down quilt up
to his chin, while Lasse sat on the edge, turning over the things
in the green chest and talking to himself. He was going through
his Sunday devotions, taking out slowly, one after another, all
the little things he had brought from the broken-up home. They
were all purely useful things--balls of cotton, scraps of stuff,