"That is Jon Hatlen, he who has been away so long at an agricultural
school and is now to take the gard."

At that moment Marit and Jon sat down.

"Who is that boy with light hair sitting yonder by the fiddler, staring
at me?" asked Jon.

Then Marit laughed and said,--

"He is the son of the houseman at Pladsen."

Oyvind had always known that he was a houseman's son; but until now he
had never realized it. It made him feel so very little, smaller than
all the rest; in order to keep up he had to try and think of all that
hitherto had made him happy and proud, from the coasting hill to each
kind word. He thought, too, of his mother and his father, who were now
sitting at home and thinking that he was having a good time, and he
could scarcely hold back his tears. Around him all were laughing and
joking, the fiddle rang right into his ear, it was a moment in which
something black seemed to rise up before him, but then he remembered
the school with all his companions, and the school-master who patted
him, and the priest who at the last examination had given him a book
and told him he was a clever boy. His father himself had sat by
listening and had smiled on him.

"Be good now, dear Oyvind," he thought the heard the school-master say,
taking him on his lap, as when he was a child. "Dear me! it all
matters so little, and in fact all people are kind; it merely seems as