the least surprise Pelle that he should be left where everybody else
had perished; in this moment of despair he found it quite natural.

He stood breathlessly silent and listened to the infinite; and he
heard the cudgel-like blows of his pulses. Still he listened, and
now he heard something more: far away in the night that surged
against his ears he heard the suggestion of a sound, the vibrating
note of some living creature. Infinitely remote and faint though it
was, yet Pelle was so aware of it that it thrilled him all through.
It was a cow feeding on the chain; he could follow the sound of her
neck scrubbing up and down against the post.

He ran down over the craggy declivity, fell, and was again on his
feet and running forward; the mist had swallowed him unawares. Then
he was down on arable that had once been woodland; then he trod on
something that felt familiar as it brushed against his feet--it was
land that had once been ploughed but had now been recaptured by the
heath. The sound grew louder, and changed to all those familiar
sounds that one hears at night coming from an open cowshed; and
now a decayed farmhouse showed through the mist. This could not of
course be the farm Pelle was looking for--Father Lasse had a proper
farmhouse with four wings! But he went forward.

Out in the country people do not lock everything up as carefully as
they do in town; so Pelle could walk right in. Directly he opened
the door of the sitting-room he was filled with an uplifting joy.
The most comfortable odor he had ever known struck upon his senses
--the foundation of everything fragrant--the scent of Father Lasse!
It was dark in the room, and the light of the night without could
not make its way through the low window. He heard the deep breathing