Then Isak carried his corn to the mill and had it ground, and brought
back flour. Then he turned woodman again, cutting the wood to be ready
for next winter. His life was spent in this work and that, according
to the season; from the fields to the woods, and back to the fields
again. He had worked on the place for six years now, and Inger five;
all might have been well, if it were only allowed to last. But it was
not. Inger worked at her loom and tended the animals; also, she was
often to be heard singing hymns, but it was a pitiful singing; she was
like a bell without a tongue.

As soon as the roads were passable, she was sent for down to the
village to be examined. Isak had to stay behind. And being there all
alone, it came into his mind to go across to Sweden and find out
Geissler; the former Lensmand had been kind to them, and might perhaps
still lend a helping hand some way to the folks at Sellanraa. But
when Inger returned, she had asked about things herself, and learned
something of what her sentence was likely to be. Strictly speaking,
it was imprisonment for life, Paragraph I. But ... After all, she had
stood up in the court itself and simply confessed. The two witnesses
from the village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put
his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the
bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk;
they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such
things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great
men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always
devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no
cause to complain of the court; she made no mention of the hare, but
when she tearfully explained that she could not be so cruel to her
poor deformed child as to let it live, the magistrate nodded, quietly
and seriously.