He had done this seventeen times and was deeply engrossed in the
thought of reaching fifty, when he heard a sharp whistle from the
big coach-house door. The farm pupil stood there beckoning him.
Pelle, crestfallen, obeyed the call, bitterly regretting his
thoughtlessness. He was most likely wanted now to grease boots
again, perhaps for them all.

The pupil drew him inside the door, which he shut. It was dark,
and the boy, coming in out of the bright daylight, could distinguish
nothing; what he made out little by little assumed shapeless
outlines to his frightened imagination. Voices laughed and growled
confusedly in his ears, and hands that seemed to him enormous pulled
him about. Terror seized him, and with it came crazy, disconnected
recollections of stories of robbery and murder, and he began to
scream with fright. A big hand covered the whole of his face, and
in the silence that followed his stifled scream, he heard a voice
out in the yard, calling to the maids to come and see something
funny.

He was too paralyzed with terror to know what was being done with
him, and only wondered faintly what there was funny out there in
the sunshine. Would he ever see the sun again, he wondered?

As if in answer to his thought, the door was at that moment thrown
open. The light poured in and he recognized the faces about him,
and found himself standing half naked in the full daylight, his
trousers down about his heels and his shirt tucked up under his
waistcoat. The pupil stood at one side with a carriage-whip, with
which he flicked at the boy's naked body, crying in a tone of