No one knows the place in the lee of the mountain where the pines grow thickest and deep layers of moss cover the ground. How should any one know it? No man’s foot has ever trodden it before; no man’s tongue has given it a name. No path leads to that hidden spot. It is the most solitary tract in the forest, and now thousands of people are looking for it.

What an endless procession of seekers! They would fill the Bro church,—not only Bro, but L?fviks and Svartsj?.

All who live near the road rush out and ask, “Has anything happened? Is the enemy upon us? Where are you going? Tell us where.”

“We are searching,” they answer. “We have been searching for two days. We shall go on to-day; but afterwards we can do no more. We are going to look through the Bj?rne wood and the firclad heights west of Ekeby.”

It was from Nyg?rd, a poor district far away among the eastern mountains, the procession had first started. The beautiful girl with the heavy, black hair and the red cheeks had disappeared a week before. The broom-girl, to whom G?sta Berling had wished to engage himself, had been lost in the great forests. No one had seen her for a week.

[404]

So the people started from Nyg?rd to search through the wood. And everybody they met joined in the search.

Sometimes one of the new-comers asks,—

“You men from Nyg?rd, how has it all happened? Why do you let that beautiful girl go alone in strange paths? The forest is deep, and God has taken away her reason.”

“No one disturbs her,” they answer; “she disturbs no one. She goes as safely as a child. Who is safer than one God himself must care for? She has always come back before.”

So have the searching crowd gone through the eastern woods, which shut in Nyg?rd from the plain. Now on the third day it passes by the Bro church towards the woods west of Ekeby.

But wherever they go, a storm of wondering rages; constantly a man from the crowd has to stop to answer questions: “What do you want? What are you looking for?”

“We are looking for the blue-eyed, dark-haired girl. She has laid herself down to die in the forest. She has been gone a week.”

“Why has she laid herself down to die in the forest? Was she hungry? Was she unhappy?”

“She has not suffered want, but she had a misfortune last spring. She has seen that mad priest, G?sta Berling, and loved him for many years. She knew no better. God had taken away her wits.”

“Last spring the misfortune happened,—before that, he had never looked at her. Then he said to her that she should be his sweetheart. It was only in jest; he let her go again, but she could not be consoled. She kept coming to Ekeby. She went[405] after him wherever he went. He wearied of her. When she was there last, they set their dogs on her. Since then no one has seen her.”

To the rescue, to the rescue! A human life is concerned! A human being has laid herself down to die in the wood! Perhaps she is already dead. Perhaps, too, she is still wandering there without finding the right way. The forest is wide, and her reason is with God.

Come everybody, men and women and children! Who can dare to stay at home? Who knows if God does not intend to use just him? Come all of you, that your soul may not some day wander helpless in dry places, seek rest and find none! Come! God has taken her reason, and the forest is wide.

It is wonderful to see people unite for some great object. But it is not hunger, nor the fear of God, nor war which has driven these out. Their trouble is without profit, their striving without reward; they are only going to find a fool. So many steps, so much anxiety, so many prayers it all costs, and yet it will only be rewarded by the recovery of a poor, misguided girl, whose reason is with God.

Those anxious searchers fill the highway. With earnest eyes they gauge the forest; they go forward sadly, for they know that they are more probably searching for the dead than the living.

Ah, that black thing at the foot of the cliff, it is not an ant-hill after all, but a fallen tree. Praised be Heaven, only a fallen tree! But they cannot see distinctly, the pines grow so thick.

It is the third day of the search; they are used to the work. They search under the sloping rock, on which the foot can slide, under fallen trees, where[406] arm or leg easily could have been broken, under the thick growing pines’ branches, trailing over soft moss, inviting to rest.

The bear’s den, the fox’s hole, the badger’s deep home, the red cranberry slope, the silver fir, the mountain, which the forest fire laid waste a month ago, the stone which the giant threw,—all that have they found, but not the place under the rock where the black thing is lying. No one has been there to see if it is an ant-hill, or a tree-trunk, or a human being. Alas! it is indeed a human being, but no one has been there to see her.

The evening sun is shining on the other side of the wood, but the young woman is not found. What should they do now? Should they search through the wood once more? The wood is dangerous in the dark; there are bottomless bogs and deep clefts. And what could they, who had found nothing when the sun was shining, find when it was gone?

“Let us go to Ekeby!” cries one in the crowd.

“Let us go to Ekeby!” they all cry together.

“Let us ask those pensioners why they let loose the dogs on one whose reason God had taken, why they drove a fool to despair. Our poor, hungry children weep; our clothes are torn; the potatoes rot in the ground; our horses are running loose; our cows get no care; we are nearly dead with fatigue—and the fault is theirs. Let us go to Ekeby and ask about this.

“During this cursed year we have had to suffer everything. The winter will bring us starvation. Whom does God’s hand seek? It was not the Broby clergyman. His prayers could reach God’s ear. Who, then, if not these pensioners? Let us go to Ekeby!

[407]

“They have ruined the estate, they have driven the major’s wife to beg on the highway. It is their fault that we have no work. The famine is their doing. Let us go to Ekeby!”

So the dark, embittered men crowd down to Ekeby; hungry women with weeping children in their arms follow them; and last come the cripples and the old men. And the bitterness spreads like an ever-increasing storm from the old men to the women, from the women to the strong men at the head of the train.

It is the autumn-flood which is coming. Pensioners, do you remember the spring-flood?

A cottager who is ploughing in a pasture at the edge of the wood hears the people’s mad cries. He throws himself on one of his horses and gallops down to Ekeby.

“Disaster is coming!” he cries; “the bears are coming, the wolves are coming, the goblins are coming to take Ekeby!”

He rides about the whole estate, wild with terror.

“All the devils in the forest are let loose!” he cries. “They are coming to take Ekeby! Save yourselves who can! The devils are coming to burn the house and to kill the pensioners!”

And behind him can be heard the din and cries of the rushing horde. Does it know what it wants, that storming stream of bitterness? Does it want fire, or murder, or plunder?

They are not human beings; they are wild beasts. Death to Ekeby, death to the pensioners!

Here brandy flows in streams. Here gold lies piled in the vaults. Here the storehouses are filled[408] with grain and meat. Why should the honest starve, and the guilty have plenty?

But now your time is out, the measure is overflowing, pensioners. In the wood lies one who condemns you; we are her deputies.

The pensioners stand in the big building and see the people coming. They know already why they are denounced. For once they are innocent. If that poor girl has lain down to die in the wood, it is not because they have set the dogs on her,—that they have never done,—but because G?sta Berling, a week ago, was married to Countess Elizabeth.

But what good is it to speak to that mob? They are tired, they are hungry; revenge drives them on, plunder tempts them. They rush down with wild cries, and before them rides the cottager, whom fear has driven mad.

The pensioners have hidden the young countess in their innermost room. L?wenborg and Eberhard are to sit there and guard her; the others go out to meet the people. They are standing on the steps before the main building, unarmed, smiling, as the first of the noisy crowd reach the house.

And the people stop before that little group of quiet men. They had wanted to throw them down on the ground and trample them under their iron-shod heels, as the people at the Lund iron-works used to do with the manager and overseer fifty years ago; but they had expected closed doors, raised weapons; they had expected resistance and fighting.

“Dear friends,” say the pensioners; “dear friends, you are tired and hungry; let us give you a little food and first a glass of Ekeby’s own home-brewed brandy.”

[409]

The people will not listen; they scream and threaten. But the pensioners are not discouraged.

“Only wait,” they say; “only wait a second. See, Ekeby stands open. The cellar doors are open; the store-rooms are open; the dairy is open. Your women are dropping with fatigue; the children are crying. Let us get them food first! Then you can kill us. We will not run away. The attic is full of apples. Let us go after apples for the children!”

An hour later the feasting is in full swing at Ekeby. The biggest feast the big house has ever seen is celebrated there that autumn night under the shining full moon.

Woodpiles have been lighted; the whole estate flames with bonfires. The people sit about in groups, enjoying warmth and rest, while all the good things of the earth are scattered over them.

Resolute men have gone to the farmyard and taken what was needed. Calves and sheep have been killed, and even one or two oxen. The animals have been cut up and roasted in a trice. Those starving hundreds are devouring the food. Animal after animal is led out and............