"Oh, that little fellow in the 'Ark' who was going to fetch the medicine
for his mother? That's such a long time ago!"

"You got into difficulties with the police for his sake! It was the
first time you were at odds with the authorities, I think."

"Well, the boy hadn't done anything; I saw that myself. So I hobbled the
copper that was going to run him in. His mother was ill--and my old 'un
was alive; and so I was a big idiot! You'll see you won't get far with
your weak pity. Do we owe any one anything, I should like to know?"

"Yes, _I_ do," said Pelle, suddenly raising his face toward the
light. "But I can't say you've much to thank any one for."

"What confounded nonsense!" exclaimed Ferdinand, staring at him. "Have
they been good to you, did you say? When they shut you up in prison too,
perhaps? You're pretending to be good, eh? You stop that! You'll have to
go farther into the country with it. So you think you deserved your
house-of-correction turn, while another was only suffering the blackest
injustice? Nonsense! They know well enough what they're doing when they
get hold of me, but they might very well have let you off. You got
together fifty thousand men, but what did you all do, I should like to
know? You didn't make as much disturbance as a mouse in a pair of lady's
unmentionables. Well-to-do people are far more afraid of me than of you
and all your fellows together. Injustice! Oh, shut up and don't slobber!
You give no quarter, and you don't ask any either: that's all. And by
the way, you might do me the favor to take back your two-krone. _I_
don't owe any one anything."