From the foundations of the “Ark” rose a peculiar sound, a stumbling, countrified footstep, dragging itself in heavy footgear over the flagstones. All Pelle’s blood rushed to his heart; he threw down his work, and with a leap was on the gallery, quite convinced that this was only an empty dream.... But there below in the court stood Father Lasse in the flesh, staring up through the timbers, as though he couldn’t believe his own eyes. He had a sack filled with rubbish on his back.

“Hallo!” cried Pelle, taking the stairs in long leaps. “Hallo!”

“Good-day, my lad!” said Lasse, in a voice trembling with emotion, considering his son with his lashless eyes. “Yes, here you have Father Lasse—if you will have him. But where, really, did you come from? Seems to me you fell down from heaven?”

Pelle took his father’s sack. “You just come up with me,” he said. “You can trust the stairs all right; they are stronger than they look.”

“Then they are like Lasse,” answered the old man, trudging up close behind him; the straps of his half-Wellingtons were peeping out at the side, and he was quite the old man. At every landing he stood still and uttered his comments on his surroundings. Pelle had to admonish him to be silent.

“One doesn’t discuss everything aloud here. It might so easily be regarded as criticism,” he said.

“No, really? Well, one must learn as long as one lives. But just look how they stand about chattering up here! There must be a whole courtyard-full! Well, well. I won’t say any more. I knew they lived one on top of another, but I didn’t think there’d be so little room here. To hang the backyard out in front of the kitchen door, one on top of another, that’s just like the birds that build all on one bough. Lord God, suppose it was all to come tumbling down one fine day!”

“And do you live here?” he cried, gazing in a disillusioned manner round the room with its sloping ceiling. “I’ve often wondered how you were fixed up over here. A few days ago I met a man at home who said they were talking about you already; but one wouldn’t think so from your lodgings. However, it isn’t far to heaven, anyhow!”

Pelle was silent. He had come to love his den, and his whole life here; but Father Lasse continued to enlarge upon his hopes of his son’s respectability and prosperity, and he felt ashamed. “Did you imagine I was living in one of the royal palaces?” he said, rather bitterly.

Lasse looked at him kindly and laid both hands on his shoulders. “So big and strong as you’ve grown, lad,” he said, wondering. “Well, and now you have me here too! But I won’t be a burden to you. No, but at home it had grown so dismal after what happened at Due’s, that I got ready without sending you word. And then I was able to come over with one of the skippers for nothing.”

“But what’s this about Due?” asked Pelle. “I hope nothing bad?”

“Good God, haven’t you heard? He revenged himself on his wife because he discovered her with the Consul. He had been absolutely blind, and had only believed the best of her, until he surprised her in her sin. Then he killed her, her and the children they had together, and went to the authorities and gave himself up. But the youngest, whom any one could see was the Consul’s, he didn’t touch. Oh, it was a dreadful misfortune! Before he gave himself up to the police he came to me; he wanted just one last time to be with some one who would talk it over with him without hypocrisy. ‘I’ve strangled Anna,’ he said, as soon as he had sat down. ‘It had to be, and I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. The children that were mine, too. I’ve dealt honestly with them.’ Yes, yes, he had dealt honestly with the poor things! ‘I just wanted to say goodbye to you, Lasse, for my life’s over now, happy as I might have been, with my contented nature. But Anna always wanted to be climbing, and if I got on it was her shame I had to thank for it. I never wanted anything further than the simple happiness of the poor man—a good wife and a few children—and now I must go to prison! God be thanked that Anna hasn’t lived to see that! She was finer in her feelings than the rest, and she had to deceive in order to get on in the world.’ So he sat there, talking of the dead, and one couldn’t notice any feeling in him. I wouldn’t let him see how sick at heart he made me feel. For him it was the best thing, so long as his conscience could sleep easy. ‘Your eyes are watering, Lasse,’ he said quietly; ‘you should bathe them a bit; they say urine is good.’ Yes, God knows, my eyes did water! God of my life, yes! Then he stood up. ‘You, too, Lasse, you haven’t much longer life granted you,’ he said, and he gave me his hand. ‘You are growing old now. But you must give Pelle my greetings—he’s safe to get on!’”

Pelle sat mournfully listening to the dismal story. But he shuddered at the last words. He had so often heard the expression of that anticipation of his good fortune, which they all seemed to feel, and had rejoiced to hear it; it was, after all, only an echo of his own self-confidence. But now it weighed upon him like a burden. It was always those who were sinking who believed in his luck; and as they sank they flung their hopes upward toward him. A grievous fashion was this in which his good fortune was prophesied! A terrible and grievous blessing it was that was spoken over him and his success in life by this man dedicated to death, even as he stepped upon the scaffold. Pelle sat staring at the floor without a sign of life, a brooding expression on his face; his very soul was shuddering at the foreboding of a superhuman burden; and suddenly a light was flashed before his eyes; there could never be happiness for him alone—the fairy-tale was dead! He was bound up with all the others—he must partake of happiness or misfortune with them; that was why the unfortunate Due gave him his blessing. In his soul he was conscious of Due’s difficult journey, as though he himself had to endure the horror of it. And Fine Anna, who must clamber up over his own family and tread them in the dust! Never again could he wrench himself quite free as before! He had already encountered much unhappiness and had learned to hate its cause. But this was something more—this was very affliction itself!

“Yes,” sighed Lasse, “a lucky thing that Brother Kalle did not live to see all this. He worked himself to skin and bone for his children, and now, for all thanks, he lied buried in the poorhouse burying-ground. Albinus, who travels about the country as a conjurer, was the only one who had a thought for him; but the money came too late, although it was sent by telegraph. Have you ever heard of a conjuring-trick like that—to send money from England to Bornholm over the telegraph cable? A devilish clever acrobat! Well, Brother Kalle, he knew all sorts of conjuring-tricks too, but he didn’t learn them abroad. They had heard nothing at all of Alfred at the funeral. He belongs to the fine folks now and has cut off all connection with his poor relations. He has been appointed to various posts of honor, and they say he’s a regular bloodhound toward the poor—a man’s always worst toward his own kind. But the fine folks, they say, they think great things of him.”

Pelle heard the old man’s speech only as a monotonous trickle of sound.

Due, Due, the best, the most good-natured man he knew, who championed Anna’s illegitimate child against her own mother, and loved her like his own, because she was defenceless and needed his love—Due was now to lay his head on the scaffold! So dearly bought was the fulfilment of his wish, to obtain a pair of horses and become a coachman! He had obtained the horses and a carriage on credit, and had himself made up for the instalments and the interest—the Consul had merely stood security for him. And for this humble success he was now treading the path of shame! His steps echoed in Pelle’s soul; Pelle did not know how he was going to bear it. He longed for his former obtuseness.

Lasse continued to chatter. For him it was fate—grievous and heavy, but it could not be otherwise. And the meeting with Pelle had stirred up so many memories; he was quite excited. Everything he saw amused him. However did anybody hit on the idea of packing folks away like this, one on top of another, like herrings in a barrel? And at home on Bornholm there were whole stretches of country where no one lived at all! He did not venture to approach the window, but prudently stood a little way back in the room, looking out over the roofs. There, too, was a crazy arrangement! One could count the ears in a cornfield as easily as the houses over here!

Pelle called Marie, who had discreetly remained in her own room. “This is my foster-mother,” he said, with his arm round her shoulders. “And that is Father Lasse, whom you are fond of already, so you always say. Now can you get us some breakfast?” He gave her money.

“She’s a good girl, that she is,” said Lasse, feeling in his sack. “She shall have a present. There’s a red apple,” he said to Marie, when she returned; “you must eat it, and then you’ll be my sweetheart.” Marie smiled gravely and looked at Pelle.

They borrowed the old clothes dealer’s handcart and went across to the apple barges to fetch Lasse’s belongings. He had sold most of them in order not to bring too great a load to the city. But he had retained a bedstead with bedding, and all sorts of other things. “And then I have still to give you greetings from Sort and Marie Nielsen,” he said.

Pelle blushed. “I owe her a few words, but over here I quite forgot it somehow! And I have half promised her my portrait. I must see now about sending it.”

“Yes, do,” said Father Lasse. “I don’t know how close you two stand to each other, but she was a good woman. And those who stay behind, they’re sad when they’re forgotten. Remember that.”

At midday Lasse had tidied himself a trifle and began to brush his hat.

“What now?” inquired Pelle. “You don’t want to go out all alone?”

“I want to go out and look at the city a bit,” replied Lasse, as though it were quite a matter of course. “I want to find some work, and perhaps I’ll go and have a peep at the king for once. You need only explain in which direction I must go.”

“You had better wait until I can come with you—you’ll only lose yourself.”

“Shall I do that?” replied Lasse, offended. “But I found my way here alone, I seem to remember!”

“I can go with the old man!” said Marie.

“Yes, you come with the old man, then no one can say he has lost his youth!” cried Lasse jestingly, as he took her hand. “I think we two shall be good friends.”

Toward evening they returned. “There are folks enough here,” said Lasse, panting, “but there doesn’t seem to be a superfluity of work. I’ve been asking first this one and then that, but no one will have me. Well, that’s all right! If they won’t, I can just put a spike on my stick and set to work collecting the bits of paper in the streets, like the other old men; I can at least do that still.”

“But I can’t give my consent to that,” replied Pelle forcibly. “My father shan’t become a scavenger!”

“Well—but I must get something to do, or I shall go back home again. I’m not going to go idling about here while you work.”

“But you can surely rest and enjoy a little comfort in your old days, father. However, we shall soon see.”

“I can rest, can I? I had better lie on my back and let myself be fed like a long-clothes child! Only I don’t believe my back would stand it!”

They had placed Lasse’s bed with the footboard under the sloping ceiling; there was just room enough for it. Pelle felt like a little boy when he went to bed that night; it was so many years since he had slept in the same room as Father Lasse. But in the night he was oppressed by evil dreams; Due’s dreadful fate pursued him in his sleep. His energetic, good-humored face went drifting through the endless grayness, the head bowed low, the hands chained behind him, a heavy iron chain was about his neck, and his eyes were fixed on the ground as though he were searching the very abyss. When Pelle awoke it was because Father Lasse stood bending over his bed, feeling his face, as in the days of his childhood.