No one had told him of it. Had he advanced so
far, been so little prepared for it, that Hans Ravn's remark, "How
you are altered, Rafael!" had frightened him?
He had certainly given up observing himself, in this coarse life
of quarrels. In it, certainly, neither words nor deeds were
weighed, and hence this hunted feeling. It was only natural that
he had ceased to observe. If the brook had been a little deeper,
he would have let himself be engulfed in it. He got up, and went
on again, quicker and quicker: sometimes he saw one person,
sometimes another, hanging in the woods.
He dare not turn round. Was it so very wonderful that others
besides himself and his family had turned from the beaten track,
and peopled the byways and the boughs in the wood? He had been
unjust towards himself and his parents; they were not alone, they
were in only too large a company. What will unjust people say, but
that the very thing which requires strength does not receive it,
but half of it comes to nothing, more than half of the powers are
wasted. Here, in these strips of woodland which run up the hills
side by side, like organ-pipes, Henrik Vergeland had also roamed:
within an ace, with him too, within an ace! Wonderful how the
ravens gather together here, where so many people are hanging.
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