"But why? The boy was the best one we have had in the shop for many
years."

"He probably did not want him to give testimony in the affair with
the brandy."

Edith stood silent and breathed quickly. "It is so base, so base,"
she murmured. She clenched her fist towards the office and towards
the little pane in the door, through which Halfvorson could see
into the shop. She would have liked, she too, to have fled out into
the world, away from all this meanness. She heard a sound far in,
in the shop. She listened, went nearer, followed the noise, and at
last found behind a keg of herring the cage of Petter Nord's white
mice.

She took it up, put it on the counter, and opened the cage door.
Mouse after mouse scampered out and disappeared behind boxes and
barrels.

"May you flourish and increase," said Edith. "May you do injury and
revenge your master!"


II

The little town lay friendly and contented under its red hill. It
was so embedded in green that the church tower only just stuck up
out of it. Garden after garden crowded one another on narrow
terraces up the slope, and when they could go no further in that
direction, they leaped with their bushes and trees across the