Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/64

 tinuous wild chase after one or two ten-kroner notes which he must find within four-and-twenty hours to pay the baker or the shoemaker. As the visits to patients were not paid on the spot, he could never withstand the temptation to try and get out of his difficulties by a bold dip into fortune's purse. He had now fallen into a complete state of imbecility. Without knowing what he was doing, he drained glass after glass, and at last sank back with open mouth, and only woke up when the little shopkeeper laid his hand on his shoulder and said: "Come, Aggerbölle, it's five o'clock."

Mortensen had got into his soft feather bed at home, he folded his hands on the counterpane, and said the Lord's Prayer.

His wife lay by his side, and as she turned round, half awake, the bed creaked under her large weighty person.

"Did you win anything, Mortensen?"

He continued his prayer undisturbed, and said at the end:

"Twelve kroner, my dear!" whereupon he fell softly and peacefully asleep.

In the meantime Villing had also reached his shop, which was in the middle of the village, near