to sleep upon his pillow, and he would lay his cheek against their
soft, quivering bodies.

Pelle's memory had deep roots. Once, at Uncle Kalle's, he had laid
himself in the big twins' cradle and had let the other children rock
him--he was then fully nine years old--and as they rocked him a
while the surroundings began to take hold of him, and he saw a smoky,
raftered ceiling, which did not belong to Kalle's house, swaying
high over his head, and he had a feeling that a muffled-up old woman,
wrapped in a shawl, sat like a shadow at the head of the cradle, and
rocked it with her foot. The cradle jolted with the over-vigorous
rocking, and every time the rocking foot slipped from the footboard
it struck on the floor with the sound of a sprung wooden shoe. Pelle
jumped up--"she bumped so," he said, bewildered. "What? No, you
certainly dreamed that!" Kalle looked, smiling, under the rockers.
"Bumped!" said Lasse. "That ought to suit you first-rate! At one
time, when you were little, you couldn't sleep if the cradle didn't
bump, so we had to make the rockers all uneven. It was almost
impossible to rock it. Bengta cracked many a good wooden shoe in
trying to give you your fancy."

The farmyard here was like a great cradle, which swayed and swayed
in the uncertain moonlight, and now that Pelle had once quite
surrendered himself to the past, there was no end to the memories
of childhood that rose within him. His whole existence passed before
him, swaying above his head as before, and the earth itself seemed
like a dark speck in the abysm of space.

And then the crying broke out from the house--big with destiny, to
be heard all over the place, so that Kongstrup slunk away shamefaced,