Suddenly the feeling of rebellion came over Pelle, hot, almost suffocating him. This cruelly cold doctrine of the right of the strong, which gave him the choice between becoming brutal or going to the dogs— this was the key to an understanding of life? It pronounced a sentence of death upon him and his fellows, upon the entire world of the poor. From this point of view, the existing conditions were the only ones possible—they were simply ideal; the sweater and the money-lender, whom he hated, were in the most harmonious agreement with the fundamental laws of life! And the terrible thing was that from this standpoint the social fabric was clearly illuminated: he could not deny it. He who best learned to accommodate himself to the existing state of things, conquered; no matter how vile the existing state of things might be.

The book threw at once a dazzling light upon society, but where was his own class in this doctrine—all the poor? They were not taken into account! Society was thus in reality only those in possession, and here he had their religion, the moral support for the uncompromising utilization. It had always been difficult to understand how men could misuse others; but here it was a sacred duty to give stones for bread. The greatest oppressor was in reality nearest to life's holy, maternal heart; for he was appointed to carry on the development.

The poor had no share in this doctrine. When a bad workman was in difficulties, the others did not press him until he had to go down, not even when he himself was to blame for his lack of means. The poor did not let the weak fall, but took him under their wing. They placed themselves outside the pale of the law and gave themselves no chance; the race could not be won with a wounded comrade on one's back. But in this fact there lay the admission that they did not belong to the existing order of things, but had the right to demand their own time of happiness. A new age must come, in which all that was needed in order that they might share in it—kindness of heart, solidarity—was predominant. Thus even the great union he had helped to effect pointed in the right direction. It had been the opposite of one against all-it had built upon the law of reciprocity.

And the poor man was not a miserable wretch, condemned by the development to be ruined, a visionary, who, as a consequence of an empty stomach, dreamed of a Utopia. Pelle had passed his childhood in the country and gone about with the rest of creation in all kinds of weather. He had seen the small singing-birds throw themselves in whole clouds at the hawk when it had seized one of their number, and pursue it until it dropped its prey in confusion. When he caught an ant in a split straw, the other ants flocked to the straw and gnawed their comrade out: they could not be frightened away. If he touched them, they squirted their poison against his hand and went on working. Their courage amused him, the sprinklings of poison were so tiny that he could not see them; but if he quickly raised his hand to his nose, he detected a sharp acid smell. Why did they not leave their comrade in his dilemma, when there were so many of them and they were so busy? They did not even stop to have a meal until they had liberated him.

The poor man must stick to the union idea; he had got hold of the right thing this time! And now all at once Pelle knew which way they ought to go. If they were outside the existing conditions and their laws, why not arrange their own world upon the laws that were theirs? Through the organizations they had been educated in self-government; it was about time that they took charge of their own existence.

The young revolutionaries kept clear of the power of money by going without things, but that was not the way. Capital always preached contentment to the poor; he would go the other way, and conquer production by a great flanking movement.

He was not afraid now of using the librarian's money. All doubt had been chased away. He was perfectly clear and saw in broad outlines a world- wide, peaceful revolution which was to subvert all existing values. Pelle knew that poverty is not confined to any country. He had once before brought forward an invincible idea. His system of profit-sharing must be the starting-point for a world-fight between Labor and Capital!



X

Two days later Pelle and the librarian went to Frederiksberg Street to look at a business that was to be disposed of. It was a small matter of half a score of workmen, with an electrical workshop in the basement and a shop above. The whole could be had by taking over the stock and machinery at a valuation. The rent was rather high, but with that exception the conditions were favorable.

"I think we'll arrange that the purchase and working capital shall bear interest and be sunk like a four per cent. credit-association loan," said Brun.

"It's cheap money," answered Pelle. "A good result won't say much about the circumstances when we haven't got the same conditions as other businesses."

"Not so very cheap. At that price you can get as many as you want on good security; and I suppose the workman ought to be regarded as the best security in an undertaking that's built upon labor," said the old man, smiling. "There'll be a big fall in discount when you come into power, Pelle! But the bare capital costs no more now either, when there are no parasites at it; and it's just parasites that we're going to fight."

Pelle had no objection to the cheap money; there were still plenty of difficulties to overcome. If they got on, it would not be long before private speculation declared war on him.

They agreed that they would have nothing to do with agents and branches; the business was to rest entirely upon itself and communicate directly with the consumers. What was made in the workshop should merely cover the expenses of the shop above, the rest of the surplus being divided among the workmen.

"According to what rules?" asked Brun, with a searching glance at Pelle.

"Equal!" he answered without hesitation. "We won't have anything to do with agreements. We made a great mistake, when we began the Movement, in giving in to the agreement system instead of doing away with it altogether. It has increased the inequality. Every one that works has a right to live."

"Do you think the capable workman will submit to sharing equally with those that are less capable?" asked Brun doubtfully.

"He must learn to!" said Pelle firmly. "How could he otherwise maintain that all work is of equal value?"

"Is that your own opinion?"

"Most decidedly. I see no reason, for instance, for making any difference between a doctor and a sewer-cleaner. It's impossible to say which of them is of the greater use in matters of health; the point is that each shall do what he can."

"Capital!" exclaimed Brun. "Capital!" The old philosopher was in the best of spirits. Pelle had considered him awkward and unpractical, and was astonished to find that his views on many points were so practical.

"It's because this is something new," said the old man, rubbing his hands. "I'd done with the old before I came into the world; there was nothing that stimulated me; I was said to be degenerated. Yes, indeed! All the same, the old bookworm's going to show his ancestors that there's vigorous blood flowing in his veins too. We two have found the place from which the world can be rocked, my dear Pelle; I think we've found it! And now we'll set to work."

There was enough to do indeed, but they were realities now, and Pelle had a pleasant feeling of once more having his feet upon the ground. This was something different from riding alone through space upon his own thought, always in danger of falling down; here he opened up his road, so to speak, with his hands.

It had been arranged that the present owner of the business should carry it on a little longer, while Pelle made himself at home in it all, learned to understand the machinery, and took lessons in book-keeping. He was always busy, used his day and at night slept like a log. His brain was no longer in a perpetual ferment like a caldron, for sleep put out the fire beneath it.

The essential thing was that they should be a party that could entirely rely upon one another, and Pelle unhesitatingly discharged those of his comrades who were not suited for work under new forms, and admitted others.

The first man he applied to was Peter Dreyer. Ellen advised him not to do so. "You know he's on bad terms with the police," she said. "You may have difficulties enough without that." But Pelle needed some one beside him who was able to look at things from a new point of view, and quite understood what was essential; egoists were of no good, and this must be the very thing for a man who had grown restive at the old state of things.

* * * * *

Pelle had come home from his book-keeping course to have his dinner. Ellen was out with Boy Comfort, but she had left the meal ready for him. It was more convenient to eat it in the kitchen, so he sat upon the kitchen table, reading a book on the keeping of accounts while he ate.

In the front room sat Lasse Frederik, learning his lessons with fingers in both ears in order to shut out the world completely. This was not so easy, however, for Sister had a loose tooth, and his fingers were itching to get at it. Every other minute he broke off his reading to offer her something or other for leave to pull it out; but the little girl always made the same answer: "No, father's going to."

He then gave up setting about it honorably, and tried to take her unawares; and at last he persuaded her to let him tie a piece of cotton round the tooth and fasten it to the doorhandle. "There! Now we've only got to burn through the cotton," he said, lighting a piece of candle, "or else father'll never be able to get the tooth out. It loosens it tremendously!" He talked on about all kinds of things to divert her attention, like a conjuror, and then suddenly brought the candle close to her nose, so that she quickly drew back. "Look, here's the tooth!" he cried triumphantly, showing it to Sister, who, however, screamed at the top of her voice.

Pelle heard it all, but quietly went on eating. They would have to make it up by themselves. It was not long before Lasse Frederik was applying a plaster to his exploit; he talked to her and gave her her toys to put her into good humor again. When Pelle went in, they were both lying on the floor with their heads under the bed. They had thrown the tooth right into the wall, and were shouting together:

"Mouse, mouse! Give me a gold tooth Instead of a bone tooth!"

"Are you going to do anything now, father?" asked Sister, running up to him.

Yes, he had several things to do.

"You're always so busy," she said sulkily. "Are you going to keep on all your life?"

Pelle's conscience smote him. "No, I'm not very busy," he said quickly. "I can stay with you for a little. What shall we do?"

Little Anna brought her large rag doll, and began to drag chairs into position.

"No, that's so stupid!" said Lasse Frederik. "Tell us about the time you minded the cows, father! About the big mad bull!" And Pelle told them stories of his childhood—about the bull and Father Lasse, the farmer of Stone Farm and Uncle Kalle with his thirteen children and his happy disposition. The big farm, the country life, the stone-quarry and the sea—they all made up a fairy-story for the two children of the pavement; the boy Pelle's battle with the great oxen for the supremacy, his wonderful capture of the twenty-five-ore piece—each incident was more exciting than the one before it. Most exciting of all was the story of the giant Eric, who became an idiot from a blow. "That was in those days," said Pelle, nodding; "it wouldn't happen like that now."

"What a lot you have seen!" said Ellen, who had come home while they were talking, and was sitting knitting. "I can hardly understand how you managed—a little fellow like that! How I should like to have seen you!"

"Father's big!" exclaimed Sister appreciatively. Lasse

Frederik was a little more reserved. It was so tiresome always to be outdone, and he would like to have found room for a parenthesis about his own exploits. "I say, there's a big load of corn in the cabman's gateway," he said, to show that he too understood country life.

"That's not corn," said Pelle; "it's hay—clover hay. Don't you even know what corn's like?"

"We call it corn," answered the boy confidently, "and it is corn too, for it has those tassels at the ends."

"The ears, you mean! But those are on coarse grass too, and, besides, corn is descended from grass. Haven't you ever really been into the country?"

"We were once going, and meant to stay a whole week, but it went wrong with mother's work. I've been right out to the Zoological Gardens, though."

Pelle suddenly realized how much the children must lose by living their life in the city. "I wonder if we shouldn't think about moving out of town," he said that evening when he and Ellen were alone.

"If you think so," Ellen answered. She herself had no desire to move into the country, indeed she had an instinctive horror of it as a place to live in. She did not understand it from the point of view of the children either; there were so many children who got on capitally in town, and he surely did not want them to become stupid peasants! If he thought so, however, she supposed it was right; he was generally right.

Then it was certainly time they gave notice; there was not much more than a month to April removing-day.

On Sundays they packed the perambulator and made excursions into the surrounding country, just as in the old days when Lasse Frederik was the only child and sat in his carriage like a little crown-prince. Now he wheeled the carriage in which Boy Comfort sat in state; and when Sister grew tired she was placed upon the apron with her legs hanging down. They went in a different direction each time, and came to places that even Lasse Frederik did not know. Close in to the back of the town lay nice old orchards, and in the midst of them a low straw-thatched building, which had evidently once been the dwelling-house on a farm. They came upon it quite by chance from a side-road, and discovered that the town was busy building barracks beyond this little idyll too, and shutting it in. When the sun shone they sat down on a bank and ate their dinner; Pelle and Lasse Frederik vied with one another in performing feats of strength on the withered grass; and Ellen hunted for winter boughs to decorate the house with.

On one of their excursions they crossed a boggy piece of ground on which grew willow copse; behind it rose cultivated land. They followed the field roads with no definite aim, and chanced upon an uninhabited, somewhat dilapidated house, which stood in the middle of the rising ground with a view over Copenhagen, and surrounded by a large, overgrown garden. On an old, rotten board stood the words "To let," but nothing was said as to where application was to be made.

"That's just the sort of house you'd like," said Ellen, for Pelle had stopped.

"It would be nice to see the inside," he said. "I expect the key's to be got at the farm up there."

Lasse Frederik ran up to the old farmhouse that lay a little farther in at the top of the hill, to ask. A little while after he came back accompanied by the farmer himself, a pale, languid, youngish man, who wore a stand-up collar and was smoking a cigar.

The house belonged to the hill farm, and had been built for the parents of the present owner. The old people had had the odd idea of calling it "Daybreak," and the name was painted in large letters on the east gable. The house had stood empty since they died some years ago, and looked strangely lifeless; the window-panes were broken and looked like dead eyes, and the floors were covered with filth.

"No, I don't like it!" said Ellen.

Pelle showed her, however, that the house was good enough, the doors and windows fitted well, and the whole needed only to be overhauled. There were four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, and some rooms above, one of these being a large attic facing south. The garden was more than an acre in extent, and in the yard was an out-house fitted up for fowls and rabbits, the rent was four hundred krones (L22).

Pelle and Lasse Frederik went all over it again and again, and made the most wonderful discoveries; but when Pelle heard, the price, he grew serious. "Then we may as well give it up," he said.

Ellen did not answer, but on the way home she reckoned it out to herself; she could see how disappointed he was. "It'll be fifteen krones (17 s.) more a month than we now pay," she suddenly exclaimed. "But supposing we could get something out of the garden, and kept fowls! Perhaps, too, we might let the upper floor furnished."

Pelle looked gratefully at her. "I'll undertake to get several hundred krones' worth out of the garden," he said.

They were tired out when they got home, for after all it was a long way out. "It's far away from everything," said Ellen. "You'd have to try to buy a second-hand bicycle." Pelle suddenly understood from the tone of her voice that she herself would be lonely out there.

"We'd better put it out of our thoughts," he said, "and look for a three-roomed flat in town. The other is unpractical after all."

When he returned from his work the following evening, Ellen had a surprise for him. "I've been out and taken the house," she said. "It's not so far from the tram after all, and we get it for three hundred krones (L16 10s.) the first year. The man promised to put it all into good order by removing-day. Aren't you glad?"

"Yes, if only you'll be happy there," said Pelle, putting his arms round her.

The children were delighted. They were to live out there in the bright world into which they had peeped, as a rule, only on very festive occasions—to wander about there every day, and always eat the food they brought with them in the open air.

A week later they moved out. Pelle did not think they could afford to hire men to do the removing. He borrowed a four-wheeled hand-cart—the same that had carried Ellen's furniture from Chapel Road—and in the course of Saturday evening and Sunday morning he and Lasse Frederik took out the things. "Queen Theresa" gave Ellen a helping hand with the packing. The last load was done very quickly, as they had to be out of the town before church-time. They half ran with it, Boy Comfort having been placed in a tub on the top of the load. Behind came Ellen with little Anna, and last of all fat "Queen Theresa" with some pot plants that had to be taken with special care. It was quite a procession.

They were in a tremendous bustle all day. The cleaning had been very badly done and Ellen and "Queen Theresa" had to do it all over again. Well, it was only what they might have expected! When you moved you always had to clean two flats, the one you left and the one you went into. There had not been much done in the way of repairs either, but that too was what one was accustomed to. Landlords were the same all the world over. There was little use in making a fuss; they were there, and the agreement was signed. Pelle would have to see to it by degrees.

By evening the house was so far in order that it could be slept in. "Now we'll stop for to-day," said Ellen. "We mustn't forget that it's Sunday." They carried chairs out into the garden and had their supper there, Pelle having laid an old door upon a barrel for a table. Every time "Queen Theresa" leaned forward with her elbows on the table, the whole thing threatened to upset, and then she screamed. She was a pastor's daughter, and her surroundings now made her melancholy. "I haven't sat like this and had supper out of doors since I ran away from home as a fifteen-year-old girl," she said, wiping her eyes.

"Poor soul!" said Ellen, when they had gone with her along the road to the tram. "She's certainly gone through a good deal. She's got no one to care about her except us."

"Is she really a pastor's daughter?" asked Pelle. "Women of that kind always pretend to be somebody of a better class who has been unfortunate."

"Oh, yes, it's true enough. She ran away from home because she couldn't stand it. She wasn't allowed to laugh, but had to be always praying and thinking about God. Her parents have cursed her."

They went for a little walk behind the farm to see the evening sky. Ellen was very talkative, and already had a thousand plans in her head. She was going to plant a great many fruit-bushes and make a kitchen- garden; and they would keep a number of fowls and rabbits. Next summer she would have early vegetables that could be sold in town.

Pelle was only half attending as he walked beside her and gazed at the glowing evening sky, which, with its long fiery lines, resembled a distant prairie-fire. There was quiet happiness within him and around him. He was in a solemn mood, and felt as though, after an absence of many years, he had once more entered the land of his childhood. There was a familiar feeling in the soft pressure of the earth beneath his feet; it was like a caress that made him strong and gave him new life. Here, with his feet on the soil, he felt himself invincible.

"You're so silent!" said Ellen, taking his arm so as to walk beside him upon the dike.

"I feel as if you had just become my bride," he said, taking her into his arms.



XI

Brun came in every morning before he went to the library to see how the work was progressing; he was greatly interested in it, and began to look younger. He was always urging Pelle on, and suggesting plans for extensions. "If money's wanted, just let me know," he said. He longed to see the effect of this new system, and was always asking Pelle whether he noticed anything. When he heard that the boot and shoe manufacturers had held a meeting to decide what should be their attitude to the undertaking, he laughed and wanted to turn on more steam, quite indifferent to what it might cost. The old philosopher had become as impatient as a child; an interest had come into his old-man's existence, and he was afraid of not getting the whole of it. "It's all very well for you to take your time," he said, "but remember that I'm old and sickly into the bargain."

He treated Pelle as a son, and generally said "thou" to him.

Pelle held back. So much depended upon the success of this venture, and he watched it anxiously; it was as though he had been chosen to question the future. Within the Movement his undertaking was followed with attention; the working-men's papers wrote about it, but awaited results. There were opinions for and against.

He wanted to give a good answer, and decided on his measures with much care; he immediately dismissed such workmen as were not suited to the plan. It made bad blood, but there was no help for that. He was busy everywhere, and where he could not go himself, Lasse Frederik went, for the boy had given up his other occupations and helped in the shop and ran errands. Ellen wanted to help too. "We can keep a servant, and then I'll learn book-keeping and keep the accounts and mind the shop."

Pelle would not agree to this, however. He was not going to have her working for their maintenance any more. A woman's place was with her children!

"Nowadays the women take part in all kinds of work," Ellen urged.

It did not matter; he had his own opinion on the subject. It was enough that the men should do the producing. Would she have them stand on the pavement and watch the women doing the work? It was very possible it did not sound liberal-minded, but he did not care. Women were like beautiful flowers, whatever people said about their being man's equal. They wore their happiness off when they had to work for their living; he had seen enough to know that.

She did not like standing and looking on while the two men were so busy, so she attacked the garden, and sowed herbs and planted cabbage in the beds that lay like thick down quilts upon the earth; and when it happened that things came up, she was happy. She had bought a gardening book, and puzzled her head about the various kinds and their treatment. Pelle came to her assistance after working hours, and everything that he handled flourished. This made Ellen a little angry. She did exactly what he did, but it was just as if the plants made a difference between them. "I've got the countryman's hand," he said, laughing.

All Sunday they were busy. The whole family was in the garden, Lasse Frederik digging, Pelle pruning the espalier round the garden door, and Ellen tying it up. The children were trying to help everybody and were mostly a hindrance. One or other of them was always doing something wrong, treading on the beds or pulling up the plants. How extraordinarily stupid they were! Regular town children! They could not even understand when they were told! Pelle could not comprehend it, and sometimes nearly lost patience.

One day when little Anna came to him unsuspectingly to show him a flowering branch of an apple-tree which she had broken off, he was angry and took her roughly by the arm; but when he saw the frightened expression in her face, he remembered the man with the strange eyes, who had taught him in his childhood to manage the cattle without using anything but his hands, and he was ashamed of himself. He took the little ones by the hand, went round the garden with them and told them about the trees and bushes, which were alive just like themselves, and only wanted to do all they could for the two children. The branches were their arms and legs, so they could imagine how dreadful it was to pull them off. Sister turned pale and said nothing, but Boy Comfort, who at last had decided, to open his mouth and had become quite a chatterbox, jabbered away and stuck out his little stomach like a drummer. He was a sturdy little fellow, and Ellen's eyes followed him proudly as he went round the garden.

The knowledge that everything was alive had a remarkable effect upon the two children. They always went about hand in hand, and kept carefully to the paths. All round them the earth was breaking and curious things coming up out of it. The beans had a bucket turned over them to protect them, and the lettuces put up folded hands as if they were praying for fine weather. Every morning when the children made their round of the garden, new things had come up. "'Oook, 'ook!" exclaimed Boy Comfort, pointing to the beds. They stood at a safe distance and talked to one another about the new wonders, bending over with their hands upon their backs as if afraid that the new thing would snatch at their fingers. Sometimes Boy Comfort's chubby hand would come out involuntarily and want to take hold of things; but he withdrew it in alarm as if he had burnt himself, saying "Ow!" and then the two children would run as fast as they could up to the house.

For them the garden was a wonder-world full of delights—and full of terrors. They soon became familiar with the plants in their own way, and entered into a kind of mystic companionship with them, met them in a friendly way and exchanged opinions—like beings from different worlds, meeting on the threshold. There was always something mysterious about their new friends, which kept them at a distance; they did not give much information about themselves. When they were asked: "Who called you?" they answered quickly: "Mother Ellen!" But if they were asked what it looked like down in the earth, they made no answer whatever. The garden continued to be an inexhaustible world to the children, no matter how much they trotted about in it. Every day they went on new journeys of discovery in under elder and thorn bushes; there were even places which they had not yet got at, and others into which they did not venture at all. They went near to them many times in the course of the day, and peeped over the gooseberry bushes into the horrible darkness that sat in there like an evil being and had no name. Out in the brilliant sunshine on the path they stood and challenged it, Sister spitting until her chin and pinafore were wet, and Boy Comfort laboriously picking up stones and throwing them in. He was so fat that he could not bend down, but had to squat on his heels whenever he wanted to pick up anything. And then suddenly they would rush away to the house in a panic of fear.

It was not necessary to be a child to follow the life in the garden. A wonderful power of growing filled everything, and in the night it crackled and rustled out in the moonlight, branches stretched themselves in fresh growths, the sap broke through the old bark in the form of flowers and new "eyes." It was as though Pelle and Ellen's happy zeal had been infectious; the half-stifled fruit-trees that had not borne for many years revived and answered the gay voices by blossoming luxuriantly. It was a race between human beings and plants as to who should accomplish the most, and between the plants themselves as to which could make the best show. "The spring is lavishing its flowers and green things upon us," said Pelle. He had never seen a nest that was so beautiful as his; he had at last made a home.

It was pleasant here. Virginia creeper and purple clematis covered the whole front of the house and hung down before the garden door, where Ellen liked to sit with her work, keeping an eye on the little ones playing on the grass, where she liked best to sit with Pelle on Sundays, when the Copenhagen families came wandering past on their little country excursions. They often stopped outside the hedge and exclaimed: "Oh, what a lovely home!"

* * * * *

The work in Pelle's workshop began, as in all other places, at six in the morning; but it stopped at four, so that those who cared about it could easily make something of the day. Pelle had reduced the working hours to nine, and dared not venture any further for the present.

Some of the hands liked this arrangement, and employed the afternoon in going out with their wives and children; but others would rather have had an hour longer in bed in the morning. One day the latter came and declared that now they were in the majority and would have it changed.

"I can't agree to that," answered Pelle. "Being early up is the workman's privilege, and I'm not going to give it up."

"But we've taken the votes on it," they said. "This is a democratic institution, isn't it?"

"I've taken no oath to the vote," Pelle answered quietly, "and in the meantime I should advise those who are dissatisfied with the conditions here to try somewhere else."

There was always something like this going on, but he did not take it for more than it was worth. They had acquired consciousness of their power, but most of them had not yet discovered its aim. They used it blindly, in childish pleasure at seeing it unfold, like boys in unfurling their banner, tyrannized a little by way of a change, and took their revenge for the subjection of old times by systematically demanding the opposite to what they had. They reeled a little; the miracle of the voting-paper had gone to their heads. It was an intelligible transition; the feeling of responsibility would get hold of them in time.

Another day two of the most skilful workmen came and asked to have piece-work introduced again. "We won't stand toiling to make money for our comrades," they said.

"Are they idle?" asked Pelle.

"No, but we work quicker."

"Then they're more thorough on the whole. The one generally balances the other."

"That's all very well, but it doesn't benefit us."

"It benefits the consumers, and under the new conditions that's the same thing. We must maintain the principle that all who do their duty are equally good; it's in our own interests."

They were satisfied for the time. They were two clever fellows, and it was only that they had not got hold of the new feature in the arrangement.

In this way there was considerable trouble. The workmen were short- sighted, and saw only from their hands to their own mouths. Impatience had also something to do with it. They had shorter hours and higher wages, but had not as much to do as in other places. It was new of course, and had to answer to their dreams; but there would be no fortunes to be made out of it as Pelle was working it. He was a little more precise than was necessary when you were pressed on all sides by vulgar competition.

There were, for instance, still a number of people who kept to the good old handsewn boots and shoes, and willingly paid half as much again for them. A good many small shoemakers availed themselves of this by advertising handsewn foot-wear, and then passed the measures on to a factory. It was a good business for both factory and shoemaker, but Pelle would have nothing to do with such transactions. He put his trade- mark on the sole of everything that went out of his workshop.

Pelle took all this with dignified calmness. What right had he to demand perspicuity of these people? It was his business to educate them to it. If only they were willing, he was satisfied. Some day he supposed he would take them so far that they would be able to take over the business jointly, or make it self-supporting; but until then they would have to fall in with his plans.

Part of a great, far-off dream was nevertheless being realized in his undertaking, modest though it was at present; and if it were successful, the way to a new age for the petty tradesmen was open. And what was of still more importance, his own home was growing through this work. He had found the point where the happiness of the many lay in the lengthening of his own; he had got the right way now! Sometimes in the evening after a troublesome day he felt a little tired of the difficulties; but when he bicycled down toward the town in the early morning, while the mists of night drifted across the fields and the lark sang above his head, he was always in good spirits. Then he could follow the consequences of his labor, and see the good principles victorious and the work growing. Kindred enterprises sprang up in other parts of the town, in other towns, still farther out. In the far distance he could see that all production was in the hands of the working-men themselves.

Peter Dreyer supported him like a good comrade, and took a good deal of the worry off his shoulders. He unselfishly put all his strength into it, but he did not share Pelle's belief in the enormous results that would come from it. "But, dear me, this is capitalistic too!" he said— "socialist capitalism! Just look up to the pavement! there goes a man with no soles to his shoes, and his feet are wet, but all the same he doesn't come down here and get new shoes, for we want money for them just like all the others, and those who need our work most simply have none. That thing"—he went on, giving a kick to one of the machines— "turns ten men into the street! There you have the whole thing!"

Pelle defended his machines, but Peter would not give in. "The whole thing should have been altered first," he said angrily. "As it is, they are inventions of the devil! The machines have come a day or two too early, and point their mouths at us, like captured cannons!"

"The machines make shoes for ten times as many people as we could make for with our hands," said Pelle, "and that can hardly be called a misfortune. It's only the distribution that's all wrong."

Peter Dreyer shrugged his shoulders; he would not discuss the question of distribution any more. If they meant to do anything to alter it he was willing to help. There had been enough nonsense talked about it. Those who had money could buy up all that they made, while the barefooted would be no better off than before. It was a deadlock. Did he think it would revolutionize the world if every man received the entire proceeds of his work? That only meant justice in the existing conditions, so long as diamonds continued to be more valuable than bread. "I don't see that those who happen to have work should have a better right to live than those who can't get any," he said wrathfully. "Or perhaps you don't know the curse of unemployment! Look at them wandering about in thousands, summer and winter, a whole army of shadows! The community provides for them so that they can just hang together. Good heavens, that isn't helping the poor, with all respect to the honorable workman! Let him keep his vote, since it amuses him! It's an innocent pleasure. Just think if he demanded proper food instead of it!"

Yes, Pelle was well enough acquainted with the great hunger reserve; he had very nearly been transferred into it himself. But here he nevertheless caught a glimpse of the bottom. There was a peaceable strength in what he was doing that might carry them on a long way. Peter Dreyer acknowledged it himself by working so faithfully with him. It was only that he would not admit it.

At first they had to stand a good deal, but by degrees Pelle learned to turn things off. Peter, who was generally so good and amenable, spoke in an angry, vexed tone when the conversation touched upon social conditions; it was as though he was at the end of his patience. Though he earned a very good amount, he was badly dressed and looked as if he did not get sufficient food; his breakfast, which he ate together with the others in the workshop, generally consisted of bread and margarine, and he quenched his thirst at the water-tap. At first the others made fun of his prison fare, but he soon taught them to mind their own business: it was not safe to offend him. Part of his earnings he used for agitation, and his comrades said that he lived with a humpbacked woman and her mother. He himself admitted no one into his confidence, but grew more and more reticent. Pelle knew that he lived in one of the Vesterbro back streets, but did not know his address. When he stood silent at his work, his expression was always gloomy, sometimes terribly sad. He seemed to be always in pain.

The police were always after him. Pelle had once or twice received a hint not to employ him, but firmly refused to submit to any interference in his affairs. It was then arbitrarily decided that Peter Dreyer should report himself to the authorities every week.

"I won't do it!" he said. "It's quite illegal. I've only been punished for political offences, and I've been so careful that they shouldn't be able to get at me for any formal mistake, and here they're having this triumph! I won't!" He spoke quietly and without excitement, but his hands shook.

Pelle tried an appeal to his unselfishness. "Do it for my sake then," he said. "If you don't they'll shut you up, and you know I can't do without you."

"Would you go and report yourself then if you were told to?" Peter asked.

"Yes. No one need be ashamed of submitting to superior brute force."

So he went. But it cost him an enormous effort, and on that day in the week it was better to leave him alone.



XII

Marie's fate lay no longer like a heavy burden upon Pelle; time had taken the bitterness out of it. He could recall without self-reproach his life with her and her two brothers in the "Ark," and often wondered what had become of the latter. No one could give him any information about them.

One day, during the midday rest, he went on his bicycle out to Morten with a message from Ellen. In Morten's sitting-room, a hunched-up figure was sitting with its back to the window, staring down at the floor. His clothes hung loosely upon him, and his thin hair was colorless. He slowly raised a wasted face as he looked toward the door. Pelle had already recognized him from his maimed right hand, which had only the thumb and one joint of the forefinger. He no longer hid it away, but let it lie upon his thin knee.

"Why, good-day, Peter!" exclaimed Pelle in surprise, holding out his hand to take the other's left hand. Peter drew the hand out of his pocket and held it out. It was a dead, maimed lump with some small protuberances like rudiments of knuckles, that Pelle found in his hand. Peter looked into his face without moving a muscle of his own, and there was only a little gleam in his eyes when Pelle started.

"What in the world are you starting for?" he said dryly. "I should think any one might have known that a fellow couldn't mind a shearing-machine with one hand. I knew it just as well as everybody else in the factory, and expected it every day; and at last I had to shut my eyes. Confound it, I often thought, won't there soon be an end to it? And then one day there it was!"

Pelle shivered. "Didn't you get any accident insurance?" he asked in order to say something.

"Of course I did! The whole council gathered on account of my humble self, and I was awarded three thousand krones (L170) as entirely invalided. Well, the master possessed nothing and had never insured me, so it never got beyond the paper. But anyhow it's a great advance upon the last time, isn't it? Our party has accomplished something!" He looked mockingly at Pelle. "You ought to give a cheer for paper reforms!"

Peter was a messenger and a kind of secretary in a revolutionary association for young men. He had taught himself to read and sat with other young men studying anarchistic literature. The others took care of him like brothers; but it was a marvel that he had not gone to the dogs. He was nothing but skin and bone, and resembled a fanatic that is almost consumed by his own fire. His intelligence had never been much to boast of, but there were not many difficulties in the problem that life had set him. He hated with a logic that was quite convincing. The strong community had passed a sham law, which was not even liable for the obligations that it admitted that it had with regard to him. He had done with it now and belonged to the destructionists.

He had come up to Morten to ask him to give a reading at the Club. "It's not because we appreciate authors—you mustn't imagine that," he said with a gloomy look. "They live upon us and enjoy a meaningless respect for it. It's only manual labor that deserves to be honored; everything else sponges on us. I'm only telling you so that you shan't come imagining something different."

"Thank you," said Morten, smiling. "It's always nice to know what you're valued at. And still you think you can make use of me?"

"Yes, you're one of the comparatively better ones among those who work to maintain the capitalists; but we're agreed at the Club that you're not a real proletariat writer, you're far too much elaborated. There have never been proletariat writers; and it's of no consequence either, for entertainment shouldn't be made out of misery. It's very likely you'll hear all about that up there."

"That's all right. I'll be sure to come," answered Morten.

"And if you'll write us a cantata for our anniversary festival—it's the day of the great Russian massacre—I'll see that it's accepted. But it mustn't be the usual hallelujah!"

"I'm glad I met you," he said to Pelle with his unchanging expression of gloom. "Have you seen anything of Karl?"

"No, where is he?" asked Pelle eagerly.

"He's a swell now. He's got a business in Adel Street; but he won't enjoy it long."

"Why not? Is there anything wrong with his affairs?"

"Nothing more than that some day we'll pull the whole thing down upon all your heads. There'll soon be quite a number of us. I say, you might speak one evening in our association, and tell us something about your prison life. I think it would interest them. We don't generally have outsiders, for we speak for ourselves; but I don't think there'd be any difficulty in getting you introduced."

Pelle promised.

"He's a devil-may-care fellow, isn't he?" exclaimed Morten when he had shut the door on Peter, "but he's no fool. Did you notice that he never asked for anything? They never do. When they're hungry they go up to the first person they meet and say: 'Let me have something to eat!' It's all the same to them what's put into their mouths so long as it's satisfying, and they never thank gratefully. Nothing affects them. They're men who put the thief above the beggar. I don't dislike it really; there's a new tone in it. Perhaps our well-behaved ruminant's busy doing away with one stomach and making up the spare material into teeth and claws."

"If only they'd come forward and do work!" said Pelle. "Strong words don't accomplish much."

"How's it going with your peaceable revolution?" asked Morten with a twinkle in his eye. "Do you see any progress in the work?"

"Oh, yes, it's slow but sure. Rome wasn't built in a day. I didn't think though that you were interested in it."

"I think you're on the right tack, Pelle," answered Morten seriously. "But let the young ones light the fire underneath, and it'll go all the quicker. That new eventualities crop up in this country is no disadvantage; the governing body may very well be made aware that there's gunpowder under their seats. It'll immensely strengthen their sense of responsibility! Would you like to see Johanna? She's been wanting very much to see you. She's ill again unfortunately."

"Ellen sent me out to propose that she should come to stay with us in the country. She thinks the child must be a great trouble to you and cannot be properly looked after here either."

"It's very kind of your wife to think of it, but hasn't she enough to do already?"

"Oh, Ellen can manage a great deal," said Pelle heartily. "You would be giving her a pleasure."

"Then I'll say 'Thank you' for the offer," exclaimed Morten. "It'll be a great relief to me, if only she can stand the moving. It isn't that she gives me any trouble now, for we get on capitally together. Johanna is good and manageable, really a splendid character in spite of her spoiling. You won't have any difficulty with her. And I think it'll be good for her to be away from me here, and be somewhere where there's a woman to see to her—and children. She doesn't get much attention here."

They went in to her and found her asleep, her pale face covered with large drops of moisture. "It's exhaustion," whispered Morten. "She's not got much strength yet." Their presence made her sleep disturbed, and she tossed from side to side and then, suddenly opening her eyes, gazed about her with an expression of wild terror. In a moment she recognized them and smiled; and raising herself a little she held out both her hands to Pelle with a charming expression of childish coquetry.

"Tell me about the house out there and Boy Comfort," she said, making room for him on the edge of the bed. "It's so tiresome here, and Mr. Morten's so serious." And she threw a glance of defiance at him.

"Is he?" said Pelle. "That must be because he writes books."

"No, but I must keep up a little dignity," said Morten, assuming a funny, schoolmasterish expression. "This young lady's beginning to be saucy!"

Johanna lay and laughed to herself, her eyes travelling from one to the other of them. "He ought to have a pair of spectacles, and then he'd be like a real one," she said. She spoke hardly above a whisper, it was all she had strength for; but her voice was mischievous.

"You must come to us if he's so bad," said Pelle, "and then you can play with the children and lie in the sunshine out in the garden. You don't know how lovely it is there now? Yes, I'm really in earnest," he continued, as she still smiled. "Ellen asked me to come and say so."

She suddenly became grave and looked from the one to the other; then looking down, and with her face turned away, she asked: "Will Morten be there too?"

"No, Johanna, I must stay here, of course; but I'll come out to see you."

"Every day?" Her face was turned to the wall, and she scratched the paper with her nails.

"I shall come and see my little sweetheart just as often as I can," said Morten, stroking her hair.

The red blood suffused her neck in a sudden wave, and was imperceptibly absorbed in the paleness of her skin, like a dying ember. Hanne's blood came and went in the same way for the merest trifle. Johanna had inherited her mother's bashfulness and unspeakable charm, and also her capricious temper.

She lay with her back turned toward them and made no reply to their persuasions. It was not easy to say whether she even heard them, until suddenly she turned to Morten with an expression of hatred on her face. "You don't need to trouble," she said, with glowing eyes; "you can easily get rid of me!"

Morten only looked at her sorrowfully, but Pelle was angry. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking it like that," he said. "Is that all the thanks Morten gets for what he's done? I must say you're a grateful child!"

Johanna took the scolding without moving a muscle of her face, but when he ceased she quietly took his hand and laid it over her delicate, thin face, which it quite covered. There she lay peeping out at him and Morten between the large fingers, with a strangely resigned expression that was meant to be roguish. "I know it was horrid of me," she said dully, moving Pelle's middle finger backward and forward in front of her eyes so that she squinted; "but I'll do what you tell me. Elle-Pelle, Morten-Porten-I can talk the P-language!" And she laughed an embarrassed laugh.

"You don't know how much better and happier you'll be when you get out to Pelle's," said Morten.

"I could easily get up and do the work of the house, so that you didn't need to have a woman," she whispered, gazing at him passionately with her big eyes. "I'm well enough now."

"My dear child, that's not what I mean at all! It's for your sake. Don't you understand that?" said Morten earnestly, bending over her.

Johanna's gaze wandered round hopelessly, as if she had given up all thought of being understood any more.

"I don't think we'll move her against her will," said Morten, as he went down with Pelle. "She is so capricious in her moods. I think, too, I should miss her, for she's a good little soul. When she's up she goes creeping about and is often quite touching in her desire to make me comfortable. And suddenly recollections of her former life awaken in her and darken her mind; she's still very mistrustful and afraid of being burdensome. But she needs the companionship of women, some one to whom she can talk confidentially. She has too much on her mind for a child."

"Couldn't you both move out to us? You can have the two upstairs rooms."

"That's not a bad idea," exclaimed Morten. "May I have two or three days to think it over? And my love to Ellen and the children!"



XIII

When the workshop closed, Pelle often went on working for an hour or two in the shop, getting the accounts straight and arranging the work for the following day in the intervals of attending to customers. A little before six he closed the shop, mounted his bicycle and hastened home with longing for the nest in his heart.

Every one else seemed to feel as he did. There was a peculiar homeward current in the traffic of the streets. Cyclists overtook him in whole flocks, and raced in shoals in front of the trams, which looked as if they squirted them away from the lines as they worked their way along with incessant, deafening ringing, bounding up and down under the weight of the overfilled platforms.

Crowds of men and women were on their way out, and met other crowds whose homes were in the opposite quarter. On the outskirts of the town the factory whistles were crowing like a choir of giant cocks, a single one beginning, the others all joining in. Sooty workmen poured out of the gates, with beer-bottles sticking out of coat-pockets and dinner handkerchiefs dangling from a finger. Women who had been at work or out making purchases, stood with their baskets on their arms, waiting for their husbands at the corner of the street. Little children tripping along hand in hand suddenly caught sight of a man far off in the crowd, and set off at a run to throw themselves at his legs.

Sister often ran right across the fields to meet her father, and Ellen stood at the gate of "Daybreak" and waited. "Good-day, Mr. Manufacturer!" she cried as he approached. She was making up for so much now, and was glowing with health and happiness. It was no use for Pelle to protest, and declare that in his world there were only workmen; she would not give up the title. He was the one who directed the whole thing, and she did not mind about the fellowship. She was proud of him, and he might call himself an errand-boy if he liked; men must always have some crochet or other in their work, or else it would not satisfy them. The arrangement about the equal division she did not understand, but she was sure that her big, clever husband deserved to have twice as much as any of the others. She did not trouble her head about that, however; she lived her own life and was contented and happy.

Pelle had feared that she would tire of the country, and apparently she did not take to it. She weeded and worked in the garden with her customary energy, and by degrees acquired a fair knowledge of the work; but it did not seem to afford her any peculiar enjoyment. It was no pleasure to her to dig her fingers into the mould. Pelle and the children throve here, and that determined her relations to the place; but she did not strike root on her own account. She could thrive anywhere in the world if only they were there; and their welfare was hers. She grew out from them, and had her own wonderful growth inward.

Within her there were strange hidden forces that had nothing to do with theories or systems, but produced the warmth that bore up the whole. Pelle no longer desired to force his way in there. What did he care about logical understanding between man and woman? It was her heart with which he needed to be irradiated. He required to be understood by his friends. His great satisfaction in being with, for instance, Morten, was that in perfect unanimity they talked until they came to a stopping- place, and if they were then silent their thoughts ran on parallel lines and were side by side when they emerged once more. But even if he and Ellen started from the same point, the shortest pause would take their thoughts in different directions; he never knew where she would appear again. No matter how well he thought he knew her, she always came up just as surprisingly and unexpectedly behind him. And was it not just that he loved? Why then contend with it on the basis of the claims of a poor logic?

She continued to be just as unfathomable, no matter how much of her he thought he had mastered. She became greater and greater with it, and she brought him a new, strange world—the mysterious unknown with which he had always had to strive, allowed itself to be tenderly embraced. He no longer demanded the whole of her; in his inmost soul probably every human being was lonely. He guessed that she was going through her own development in concealment, and wondered where she would appear again.

It had formerly been a grief to him that she did not join the Movement; she was not interested in political questions and the suffrage. He now dimly realized that that was just her strength, and in any case he did not wish her otherwise. She seldom interfered definitely with what he did, and why should she? She exerted a silent influence upon everything he did, stamped each of his thoughts from the moment they began to shoot up. For the very reason that she did not know how to discuss, she could not be refuted; what to him was downright logic had no effect whatever upon her. He did not get his own thoughts again stale from her lips, and did not wish to either; her wonderful power over him lay in the fact that she rested so securely on her own, and answered the most crushing arguments with a smile. Pelle was beginning to doubt as to the value of superiority of intellect; it seemed to have undisputed rule over the age, but did not accomplish chiefly good. As compared with Ellen's nature, it seemed to him poor. The warmth in a kiss convinced her better than a thousand sensible reasons, and yet she seldom made a mistake.

And she herself gave out warmth. They went to her, both he and the children, when there was anything wrong. She did not say much, but she warmed. She still always seemed to him like a pulse that beat, living and palpable, out from the invisible, with a strangely tranquil speech. When his head was hot and tired with adverse happenings, there was nothing more delightful than to rest it upon her bosom and listen, only half awake, to the dull, soothing murmur within like that of the earth's springs when, in his childhood, he laid his ear to the grass.

The spring was beautiful, and they were much out in it; when no one could see them they walked hand-in-hand along the dikes like two young lovers. Then Pelle talked and showed her things. Look! there it grew in that way, and here in quite a different way. Was it not strange? He lived over again all his childhood's excitement in spring. Ellen listened to him, smiling; she was not astonished at anything so natural as that things grew; she was merely transformed! The earth simply sent up its juices into her too.

The fresh air and the work in the garden tanned her bare arms, and gave strength and beauty to her figure, while her easy circumstances freed her from care. One day a new being showed in her eyes, and looked at Pelle with the inquisitiveness of a kid. "Shall we play?" it said. Was it he or the spring that set fire to her? No matter! The pleasure was his! The sunshine entered the innermost corners of his soul, the musty corners left by the darkness of his prison-cell, and cured him completely; her freedom from care infected him, and he was entirely happy. It was Ellen who had done it all; at last she had taken upon herself to be the messenger between joy and him!

She became gentler and more vigorous in disposition every day. The sun and the wind across the open country called forth something in her that had never been there before, an innocent pleasure in her own body and a physical appetite that made her teeth white and gleaming. She was radiant with delight when Pelle brought her little things to adorn herself with; she did not use them for the children now! "Look!" she said once, holding up a piece of dark velvet to her face which in the evening gave out again the warmth of the sun, as hay its scent. "You must give me a dress like this when we become rich." And her eyes sparkled as she looked at him, full of promises of abundant returns. He thought he belonged to the soil, and yet it was through her that he first really came into contact with it! There was worship of nature in the appetite with which she crunched the first radishes of the year and delighted in their juicy freshness; and when in the evening he sprang from his bicycle and took her in his arms, she herself exhaled the fresh perfume of all that had passed through the spring day—the wind and the products of the soil. He could smell in her breath the perfume of wild honey, mixed with the pollen and nectar of wild flowers; and she would close her eyes as though she herself were intoxicated with it.

Their dawning affection became passionate first love out here. Ellen was always standing at the gate waiting for him. As soon as Pelle had had his supper, the children dragged him round the garden to show him what had taken place during the day. They held his hands and Ellen had to walk by herself. Pelle and she had an intense desire to be close together, but the little ones would not submit to be set aside. "He's our father!" they said; and Pelle and Ellen were like two young people that are kept cruelly apart by a remorseless fate, and they looked at one another with eyes that were heavy with expression.

When the little ones had gone to bed they stole away from it all, leaving Lasse Frederik in charge of the house. He had seen an artist sitting outside the hedge and painting the smoky city in the spring light, and had procured himself a paintbox. He sat out there every evening now, daubing away busily. He did not mean to be a sailor now!

They went up past the farm and on toward the evening sun, walked hand- in-hand in the dewy grass, gazing silently in front of them. The ruddy evening light colored their faces and made their eyes glow. There was a little grove of trees not far off, to which they often went so as to be quite away from the world. With their arms round one another they passed into the deep twilight, whispering together. Now and then she bent her head back for him to kiss her, when an invisible ray would strike her eye and be refracted into a rainbow-colored star, in the darkness.

A high dike of turfs ran along the edge of the wood, and low over it hung hazel and young beech trees. In under the branches there were little bowers where they hid themselves; the dead leaves had drifted together in under the dike and made a soft couch. The birds above their heads gave little sleepy chirps, turned on the branch and twittered softly as though they dreamed the day's melodies over again. Sometimes the moon peeped in at them with a broad smile. The heavy night- exhalations of the leaves lulled them to sleep, and sometimes they were only wakened by the tremor that passes through everything when the sun rises. Pelle would be cold then, but Ellen's body was always warm although she had removed some of her clothing to make a pillow for their heads.

She still continued to be motherly; her devotion only called forth new sides of her desire for self-sacrifice. How rich she was in her motherliness! She demanded nothing but the hard ground, and could not make herself soft enough: everything was for him. And she could make herself so incomprehensibly soft! Providence had thrown all His riches and warmth into her lap; it was no wonder that both life and happiness had made their nesting-place there.

Their love increased with the sunshine, and made everything bright and good; there was no room for any darkness. Pelle met all troubles with a smile. He went about in a state of semi-stupor, and even his most serious business affairs could not efface Ellen's picture from his mind. Her breath warmed the air around him throughout the day, and made him hasten home. At table at home they had secret signs that referred to their secret world. They were living in the first love of youth with all its sweet secrecy, and smiled at one another in youthful, stealthy comprehension, as though the whole world were watching them and must learn nothing. If their feet touched under the table, their eyes met and Ellen would blush like a young girl. Her affection was so great that she could not bear it to be known, even to themselves. A red flame passed over her face, and her eyes were veiled as though she hid in them the unspeakable sweetness of her tryst from time to time. She rarely spoke and generally answered with a smile; she sang softly to herself, filled with the happiness of youth.

* * * * *

One afternoon when he came cycling home Ellen did not meet him as usual. He became anxious, and hurried in. The sofa was made into a bed, and Ellen was standing by it, bending over Johanna, who lay shivering with fever. Ellen raised her head and said, "Hush!" The children were sitting in a corner gazing fearfully at the sick girl, who lay with closed eyes, moaning slightly.

"She came running out here this afternoon," whispered

Ellen, looking strangely at him; "I can't think why. She's terribly ill! I've sent Lasse Frederik in to Morten, so that he may know she's with us."

"Have you sent for the doctor?" asked Pelle, bending down over Johanna.

"Yes. Lasse Frederik will tell Morten to bring his doctor with him. He must know her best. I should think they'll soon be here."

A shivering fit came over Johanna. She lay working her tongue against the dry roof of her mouth, now and then uttering a number of disconnected words, and tossing to and fro upon the bed. Suddenly she raised herself in terror, her wide-open eyes fixed upon Pelle, but with no recognition in them. "Go away! I won't!" she screamed, pushing him away. His deep voice calmed her, however, and she allowed herself to be laid down once more, and then lay still with closed eyes.

"Some one has been after her," said Ellen, weeping. "What can it be?"

"It's the old story," Pelle whispered with emotion. "Morten says that it constantly reappears in her.—Take the children out into the garden, Ellen. I'll stay here with her."

Ellen went out with the little ones, who could hardly be persuaded to come out of their corner; but it was not long before their chattering voices could be heard out on the grass.

Pelle sat with his hand on Johanna's forehead, staring straight before him. He had been rudely awakened to the horror of life once more. Convulsive tremors passed through her tortured brow. It was as if he held in his hand a fluttering soul that had been trodden in the mire beneath heavy heels—a poor crushed fledgeling that could neither fly nor die.

He was roused by the sound of a carriage driving quickly up to the garden gate, and went out to meet the men.

The doctor was very doubtful about Johanna's condition. "I'm afraid that the fits will increase rather than decrease," he said in a whisper. "It would be better if she were sent to the hospital as soon as she's able to be moved."

"Would it be better for her?" asked Ellen.

"No, not exactly for her, but—she'll be a difficult patient, you know!"

"Then she shall remain here," said Ellen; "she shall be well looked after."

Lasse Frederik had to take his bicycle and ride to the chemist's, and immediately after the doctor drove away.

They sat outside the garden door, so that they could hear any sound from the sick girl, and talked together in low tones. It was sad to see Morten; Johanna's flight from him had wounded him deeply.

"I wonder why she did it?" said Pelle.

"She's been strange ever since you came up and proposed that she should come out to you," said Morten sadly. "She got it into her head that she was a burden to me and that I would like to get rid of her. Two or three days ago she got up while I was out, and began working in the house—I suppose as a return for my keeping her. She's morbidly sensitive. When I distinctly forbade her she declared that she wouldn't owe me anything and meant to go away. I knew that she might very likely do it in spite of her being ill, so I stayed at home. At midday to-day I just went down to fetch milk, and when I came up she was gone. It was a good thing she came out here; I think she'd do anything when once the idea's taken her that she's a burden."

"She must be very fond of you," said Ellen, looking at him.

"I don't think so," answered Morten, with a sad smile. "At any rate, she's hidden it well. My impression is that she's hated me ever since the day we spoke of her coming out here.—May I stay here for the night?"

"If you can put up with what we have," answered Ellen. "It won't be a luxurious bed, but it'll be something to lie down on."

Morten did not want a bed, however. "I'll sit up and watch over Johanna," he said.



XIV

The house was thus transformed into a nursing home. It was a hard hit at their careless happiness, but they took it as it came. Neither of them demanded more of life than it was capable of.

Ellen was with the sick girl day and night until the worst was over; she neglected both Pelle and the children to give all her care to Johanna.

"You've got far too much to do," said Pelle anxiously. "It'll end in your being ill too. Do let us have help!" And as Ellen would not hear of it, he took the matter into his own hands, and got "Queen Theresa" to be out there during the day.

In the course of a few days Morten arranged his affairs, got rid of his flat, and moved out to them. "You won't be able to run away from me, after all," he said to Johanna, who was sitting up in bed listening to the carrying upstairs of his things. "When you're well enough you shall be moved up into the big attic; and then we two shall live upstairs and be jolly again, won't we?"

She made no answer, but flushed with pleasure.

Ellen now received from Morten the amount he usually spent in a month on food and house-rent. She was quite disconcerted. What was she to do with all that money? It was far too much! Well, they need no longer be anxious about their rent.

Johanna was soon so far recovered as to be able to get up for a little. The country air had a beneficial effect upon her nerves, and Ellen knew how to keep her in good spirits. Old Brun made her a present of a beautiful red and yellow reclining chair of basket work; and when the sun shone she was carried out onto the grass, where she lay and watched the children's play, sometimes joining in the game from her chair, and ordering them hither and thither. Boy Comfort submitted to it good- naturedly, but Sister was a little more reserved. She did not like this stranger to call Pelle "father"; and when she was in a teasing mood she would stand a little way off and repeat again and again: "He's not your father, for he's mine!" until Ellen took her away.

Johanna mostly lay, however, gazing into space with an expression of the utmost weariness. For a moment her attention would be attracted by anything new, but then her eyes wandered away again. She was never well enough to walk about; even when she felt well, her legs would not support her. Brun came out to "Daybreak" every afternoon to see her. The old man was deeply affected by her sad fate, and had given up his usual holiday trip in order to keep himself acquainted with her condition. "We must do something for her," he said to the doctor, who paid a daily visit at his request. "Is there nothing that can be done?"

The doctor shook his head. "She couldn't be better off anywhere than she is here," he said.

They were all fond of her, and did what they could to please her. Brun always brought something with him, expensive things, such as beautiful silk blankets that she could have over her when she lay out in the garden, and a splendid coral necklace. He got her everything that he could imagine she would like. Her eyes sparkled whenever she received anything new, and she put everything on. "Now I'm a princess in all her finery," she whispered, smiling at him; but a moment after she had forgotten all about it. She was very fond of the old man, made him sit beside her, and called him "grandfather" with a mournful attempt at roguishness. She did not listen to what he told her, however, and when the little ones crept up and wanted him to come with them to play in the field, he could quite well go, for she did not notice it.

Alas! nothing could reconcile her child's soul to her poor, maltreated body, neither love nor trinkets. It was as though it were weary of its covering and had soared as far out as possible, held captive by a thin thread that would easily wear through. She grew more transparent every day; it could be clearly seen now that she had the other children beside her. They ate and throve for her as well as themselves! When Ellen was not on the watch, Boy Comfort would come and eat up Johanna's invalid food, though goodness knew he wasn't starved! Johanna herself looked on calmly; it was all a matter of such indifference to her.

It was an unusually fine summer, dry and sunny, and they could nearly always be in the garden. They generally gathered there toward evening; Ellen and "Queen Theresa" had finished their house work, and sat by Johanna with their sewing, Brun kept them company with his cheerful talk, and Johanna lay and dozed with her face toward the garden gate. They laughed and joked with her to keep her in good spirits. Brun had promised her a trip to the South if she would make haste to use her legs, and told her about the sun down there and the delicious grapes and oranges that she would be allowed to pick herself. She answered everything with her sad smile, as though she knew all too well what awaited her. Her thick, dark hair overshadowed more and more her pale face; it was as if night were closing over her. She seemed to be dozing slowly out of existence, with her large eyes turned toward the garden gate.

Morten was often away on lecturing tours, sometimes for several days at a time. When at last he entered the gate, life flashed into her face. He was the only one who could recall her spirit to its surroundings; it was as though it only lingered on for him. She was no longer capricious with him. When she had the strength for it, she sat up and threw her arms round his neck; her tears flowed silently, and her longing found free vent. Ellen understood the child's feelings, and signed to the others to leave the two together. Morten would then sit for hours beside her, telling her all that he had been doing; she never seemed to grow weary, but lay and listened to him with shining eyes, her transparent hand resting upon his arm. Every step he took interested her; sometimes a peculiar expression came into her eyes, and she fell suspiciously upon some detail or other. Her senses were morbidly keen; the very scent of strange people about him made her sullen and suspicious.

"The poor, poor child! She loves him!" said Ellen one day to Pelle, and suddenly burst into tears. "And there she lies dying!" Her own happiness made her so fully conscious of the child's condition.

"But dearest Ellen!" exclaimed Pelle in protest. "Don't you think I can see? That's of course why she's always been so strange to him. How sad it is!"

The child's sad fate cast a shadow over the others, but the sun rose high in the heavens and became still stronger.

"Pelle," said Ellen, stroking his hair, "the light nights will soon be over!"

Morten continued obstinately to believe that little Johanna would recover, but every one else could see distinctly what the end was to be. Her life oozed away with the departing summer. She became gentler and more manageable every day. The hatred in her was extinguished; she accepted all their kindness with a tired smile. Through her spoiled being there radiated a strange charm, bearing the stamp of death, which seemed to unfold itself the more as she drew nearer to the grave.

Later in the autumn her nature changed. Suddenly, when Pelle or Morten approached, her eyes would fill with horror and she would open her mouth to cry out; but when she recognized them, she nestled down in their arms, crying pitifully. She could no longer go into the garden, but always kept her bed. She could not bear the noise of the children; it tortured her and carried her thoughts back to the narrow streets: they had to keep out of doors all day. Delirious attacks became more frequent, and her thin, languid voice became once more rough and hoarse. She lay fighting with boys and roughs and high hats, defended herself with nicknames and abusive epithets, and snarled at every one, until she at last gave in and asked for brandy, and lay crying softly to herself. Old Brun never dared show himself at her bedside; she took him for an old chamberlain that the street-boys had set onto her, and received him with coarse demands.

This insight into the child's terrible existence among the timber-stacks affected them all. It seemed as if the malignity of life would not relax its hold on this innocent victim, but would persecute her as long as life remained, and made all their love useless. Morten stayed with her during the days in which she fought her battle with death; he sat watching her from a corner, only venturing nearer when she dozed. Ellen was the only one who had the strength to meet it. She was with Johanna night and day, and tried to make death easier for her by her unwearying care; and when the fits came over the child, she held her in her arms and sought to calm her with a mother's love.

She had never been in a death-chamber before, but did not quail; and the child died upon her breast.

* * * * *

Johanna's death had completely paralyzed Morten. As long as he possibly could he had clung to the belief that her life might be saved; if not, it would be so unreasonably unjust; and when her hopeless condition became apparent to him, he collapsed. He did nothing, but wandered about dully, spoke to no one and ate very little. It was as though he had received a blow on the head from a heavy hand.

After the funeral he and Pelle walked home together while the others drove. Pelle talked of indifferent matters in order to draw Morten's thoughts away from the child, but Morten did not listen to him.

"My dear fellow, you can't go on like this," said Pelle suddenly, putting his arm through Morten's. "You've accompanied the poor child along the road as far as you could, and the living have some claim on you too."

Morten raised his head. "What does it matter whether I write a few pages more or less?" he said wearily.

"Your pen was given you to defend the defenceless with; you mustn't give up," said Pelle.

Morten laughed bitterly. "And haven't I pleaded the cause of the children as well as I could, and been innocent enough to believe that there, at any rate, it was only necessary to open people's eyes in order to touch their hearts? And what has been gained? The addition, at the most, of one more volume to the so-called good literature. Men are practical beings; you can with the greatest ease get them to shed theater tears; they're quite fond of sitting in the stalls and weeping with the unfortunate man; but woe to him if they meet him again in the street! The warmest words that have ever been spoken to me about my descriptions of children were from an old gentleman whom I afterward found to be trying to get hold of little children."

"But what are you going to do?" said Pelle, looking at him with concern.

"Yes, what am I going to do—tell me that! You're right in saying I'm indifferent, but can one go on taking part in a battle that doesn't even spare the children? Do you remember my little sister Karen, who had to drown herself? How many thousand children are there not standing behind her and Johanna! They call this the children's century, and the children's blood is crying out from the earth! They're happy when they can steal away. Fancy if Johanna had lived on with her burden! The shadows of childhood stretch over the whole of life."

"Yes, and so does the sunshine of childhood!" exclaimed Pelle. "That's why we mustn't fail the poor little ones. We shall need a race with warm hearts."

"That's just what I've thought," said Morten sadly. "Do you know, Pelle, I loved that child who came to me from the very lowest depth. She was everything to me; misery has never come so cruelly near to me before. It was a beautiful dream of mine—a foolish dream—that she would live. I was going to coax life and happiness into her again, and then I would have written a book about all that triumphs. I don't know whether you understand me—about misery that becomes health and happiness beneath the sunshine of kindness. She was that; life could hardly be brought lower! But did you notice how much beauty and delicacy there was after all buried beneath the sewer-mud in her? I had looked forward to bringing it out, freed from all want and ugliness, and showing the world how beautiful we are down here when the mud is scraped off us. Perhaps it might have induced them to act justly. That's what I dreamed, but it's a bitter lot to have the unfortunates appointed to be one's beloved. My only love is irretrievably dead, and now I cannot write about anything that triumphs. What have I to do with that?"

"I think it's Victor Hugo who says that the heart is the only bird that carries its cage," said Pelle, "but your heart refuses to take it when there is most use for it."

"Oh, no!" said Morten with a little more energy. "I shan't desert you; but this has been a hard blow for me. If only I had a little more of your clear faith! Well, I must be glad that I have you yourself," he added, holding out his hand to Pelle with a bright smile.

The librarian came across the fields to meet them. "It's taken you two Dioseuri a long time," he said, looking at them attentively. "Ellen's waiting with the dinner."

The three men walked together up the bare stubblefield toward the house. "The best of the summer's over now," said Brun, looking about with a sigh. "The wheel has turned on one more cog!"

"Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to one," answered Morten, who was still in a morbid mood.

"That's the sort of thing one says while one's young and prosperous—and doesn't mean seriously. To-morrow life will have taken you and your sorrow into its service again. But I have never been young until now that I've learned to know you two, so I count every fleeting hour like a miser—and envy you who can walk so quickly," he added with a smile.

They walked up more slowly, and as they followed the hedge up toward the house they heard a faint whimpering in the garden. In a hole in an empty bed, which the two children had dug with their spades, sat Boy Comfort, and Sister was busy covering him with earth; it was already up to his neck. He was making no resistance, but only whimpered a little when the mould began to get near his mouth.

Pelle gave the alarm and leaped the hedge, and Ellen at the same moment came running out. "You might have suffocated little brother!" she said with consternation, taking the boy in her arms.

"I was only planting him," said Anna, offended at having her work destroyed. "He wanted to be, and of course he'd come up again in the spring!" The two children wanted a little brother, and had agreed that Boy Comfort should sacrifice himself.

"You mustn't do such things," said Ellen quietly. "You'll get a little brother in the spring anyhow." And she looked at Pelle with a loving glance.



XV

Work went on steadily in the cooperative works. It made no great stir; in the Movement they had almost forgotten that it existed at all. It was a long and difficult road that Pelle had set out on, but he did not for a moment doubt that it led to the end he had in view, and he set about it seriously. Never had his respiration been so slow.

At present he was gaining experience. He and Peter Dreyer had trained a staff of good workmen, who knew what was at stake, and did not allow themselves to be upset even if a foreign element entered. The business increased steadily and required new men; but Pelle had no difficulty with the new forces; the undertaking was so strong that it swallowed them and remodelled them.

The manufacturers at any rate remembered his existence, and tried to injure him at every opportunity. This pleased him, for it established the fact that he was a danger to them. Through their connections they closed credit, and when this did not lead to anything, because he had Brun's fortune to back him up, they boycotted him with regard to materials by forcing the leather-merchants not to sell to him. He then had to import his materials from abroad. It gave him a little extra trouble, and now it was necessary to have everything in order, so that they should not come to a standstill for want of anything.

One day an article was lacking in a new consignment, and the whole thing was about to come to a standstill. He managed to obtain it by stratagem, but he was angry. "I should like to hit those leather-merchants back," he said to Brun. "If we happen to be in want of anything, we're obliged to get it by cunning. Don't you think we might take the shop next door, and set up a leather business? It would be a blow to the others, and then we should always have what we want to use. We shouldn't get rich on it, so I think the small masters in out-of-the-way corners would be glad to have us."

Brun had no objection to making a little more war to the knife. There was too little happening for his taste!

The new business opened in October. Pelle would have had Peter Dreyer to be at the head of it, but he refused. "I'm sure I'm not suited for buying and selling," he said gloomily, so Pelle took one of the young workmen from the workshop into the business, and kept an eye upon it himself.

It at once put a little more life into things; there was always plenty of material. They now produced much more than they were able to sell in the shop, and Pelle's leather shop made the small masters independent of private capital. Many of them sold a little factory foot-wear in addition to doing repairs, and these now took their goods from him. Out in the provinces his boots and shoes had already gained a footing in many places; it had come about naturally, in the ordinary sequence of things. The manufacturers followed them up there too, wherever they could; but the consequence was that the workmen patronized them and forced them in again to the shops of which they themselves were the customers. A battle began to rage over Pelle's boots and shoes.

He knew, however, that it was only the beginning. It would soon come to a great conflict, and were his foundations sufficiently strong for that? The manufacturers were establishing a shop opposite his, where the goods were to be sold cheap in order to ruin his sales, and one day they put the prices very much down on everything, so as to extinguish him altogether.

"Let them!" said Brun. "People will be able to get shoes cheap!" Pelle was troubled, however, at this fresh attack. Even if they held out, it might well exhaust their economic strength.

The misfortune was that they were too isolated; they were as yet like men washed up onto an open shore; they had nothing to fall back upon. The employers had long since discovered that they were just as international as the workmen, and had adopted Pelle's old organization idea. It was not always easy, either, to get materials from abroad; he noticed the connection. Until he had got the tanners to start a cooperative business, he ran the risk of having his feet knocked away from under him at any moment. And in the first place he must have the great army of workmen on his side; that was whither everything pointed.

One day he found himself once more after many years on the lecturer's platform, giving his first lecture on cooperation. It was very strange to stand once more before his own people and feel their faces turned toward him. At present they looked upon him as one who had come from abroad with new ideas, or perhaps only a new invention; but he meant to win them! Their very slowness promised well when once it was overcome. He knew them again; they were difficult to get started, but once started could hardly be stopped again. If his idea got proper hold of these men with their huge organizations and firm discipline, it would be insuperable. He entered with heart and soul into the agitation, and gave a lecture every week in a political or trade association.

"Pelle, how busy you are!" said Ellen, when he came home. Her condition filled him with happiness; it was like a seal upon their new union. She had withdrawn a little more into herself, and over her face and figure there was thrown a touch of dreamy gentleness. She met him at the gate now a little helpless and remote—a young mother, to be touched with careful hands. He saw her thriving from day to day, and had a happy feeling that things were growing for him on all sides.

They did not see much of Morten. He was passing through a crisis, and preferred to be by himself. He was always complaining that he could not get on with his work. Everything he began, no matter how small, stuck fast.

"That's because you don't believe in it any longer," said Pelle. "He who doubts in his work cuts through the branch upon which he is himself sitting."

Morten listened to him with an expression of weariness. "It's much more than that," he said, "for it's the men themselves I doubt, Pelle. I feel cold and haven't been able to find out why; but now I know. It's because men have no heart. Everything growing is dependent upon warmth, but the whole of our culture is built upon coldness, and that's why it's so cold here."

"The poor people have a heart though," said Pelle. "It's that and not common sense that keeps them up. If they hadn't they'd have gone to ruin long ago—simply become animals. Why haven't they, with all their misery? Why does the very sewer give birth to bright beings?"

"Yes, the poor people warm one another, but they're blue with cold all the same! And shouldn't one rather wish that they had no heart to be burdened with in a community that's frozen to the very bottom? I envy those who can look at misery from a historical point of view and comfort themselves with the future. I think myself that the good will some day conquer, but it's nevertheless fearfully unreasonable that millions shall first go joyless to the grave in the battle to overcome a folly. I'm an irreconcilable, that's what it is! My mind has arranged itself for other conditions, and therefore I suffer under those that exist. Even so ordinary a thing as to receive money causes me suffering. It's mine, but I can't help following it back in my thoughts. What want has been caused by its passing into my hands? How much distress and weeping may be associated with it? And when I pay it out again I'm always troubled to think that those who've helped me get too little—my washerwoman and the others. They can scarcely live, and the fault is mine among others! Then my thoughts set about finding out the others' wants and I get no peace; every time I put a bit of bread into my mouth, or see the stores in the shops, I can't help thinking of those who are starving. I suffer terribly through not being able to alter conditions of which the folly is so apparent. It's of no use for me to put it down to morbidness, for it's not that; it's a forestalling in myself. We must all go that way some day, if the oppressed do not rise before then and turn the point upward. You see I'm condemned to live in all the others' miseries, and my own life has not been exactly rich in sunshine. Think of my childhood, how joyless it was! I haven't your fund to draw from, Pelle, remember that!"

No, there had not been much sunshine on Morten's path, and now he cowered and shivered with cold.

One evening, however, he rushed into the sitting-room, waving a sheet of paper. "I've received a legacy," he cried. "Tomorrow morning I shall start for the South."

"But you'll have to arrange your affairs first," said Pelle.

"Arrange?" Morten laughed. "Oh, no! You're always ready to start on a journey. All my life I've been ready for a tour round the world at an hour's notice!" He walked to and fro, rubbing his hands. "Ah, now I shall drink the sunshine—let myself be baked through and through! I think it'll be good for my chest to hop over a winter."

"How far are you going?" asked Ellen, with shining eyes.

"To Southern Italy and Spain. I want to go to a place where the cold doesn't pull off the coats of thousands while it helps you on with your furs. And then I want to see people who haven't had a share in the blessings of mechanical culture, but upon whom the sun has shone to make up for it—sunshine-beings like little Johanna and her mother and grandmother, but who've been allowed to live. Oh, how nice it'll be to see for once poor people who aren't cold!"

"Just let him get off as quickly as possible," said Ellen, when Morten had gone up to pack; "for if he once gets the poor into his mind, it'll all come to nothing. I expect I shall put a few of your socks and a little underclothing into his trunk; he's got no change. If only he'll see that his things go to the wash, and that they don't ruin them with chlorine!"

"Don't you think you'd better look after him a little while he's packing?" asked Pelle. "Or else I'm afraid he'll not take what he'll really want. Morten would sometimes forget his own head."

Ellen went upstairs with the things she had looked out. It was fortunate that she did so, for Morten had packed his trunk quite full of books, and laid the necessary things aside. When she took everything out and began all over again, he fidgeted about and was quite unhappy; it had been arranged so nicely, the fiction all together in one place, the proletariat writings in another; he could have put his hand in and taken out anything he wanted. But Ellen had no mercy. Everything had to be emptied onto the floor, and he had to bring every stitch of clothing he possessed and lay them on chairs, whence she selected the necessary garments. At each one that was placed in the trunk, Morten protested meekly: it really could not be worth while to take socks with him, nor yet several changes of linen; you simply bought them as you required them. Indeed? Could it not? But it was worth while lugging about a big trunk full of useless books like any colporteur, was it?

Ellen was on her knees before the trunk, and was getting on with her task. Pelle came up and stood leaning against the door-jamb, looking at them. "That's right! Just give him a coating of paint that will last till he gets home again!" he said, laughing. "He may need it badly."

Morten sat upon a chair looking crestfallen. "Thank goodness, I'm not married!" he said. "I really begin to be sorry for you, Pelle." It was evident that he was enjoying being looked after.