faltered and he had to lean for support against the wall; he looked as
if he were about to go back again, but he drew a deep breath and went
out on to the open ground.

The spring breeze made a playful assault upon him, tried to ruffle his
prison-clipped, slightly gray hair, which had been curly and fair when
last it had done so, and penetrated gently to his bare body like a soft,
cool hand. "Welcome, Pelle!" said the sun, as it peeped into his
distended pupils in which the darkness of the prison-cell still lay
brooding. Not a muscle of his face moved, however; it was as though hewn
out of stone. Only the pupils of his eyes contracted so violently as to
be almost painful, but he continued to look earnestly before him.
Whenever he saw any one, he stopped and gazed eagerly, perhaps in the
hope that it was some one coming to meet him.

As he turned into the King's Road some one called to him. He turned
round in sudden, intense joy, but then his head dropped and he went on
without answering. It was only a tramp, who was standing half out of a
ditch in a field a little way off, beckoning to him. He came running
over the ploughed field, crying hoarsely: "Wait a little, can't you?
Here have I been waiting for company all day, so you might as well wait
a little!"

He was a broad-shouldered, rather puffy-looking fellow, with a flat back
and the nape of his neck broad and straight and running right up into
his cap without forming any projection for the back of his head, making
one involuntarily think of the scaffold. The bone of his nose had sunk
into his purple face, giving a bull-dog mixture of brutality and stupid
curiosity to its expression.