Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/67

 beating his forehead with his fist and cursing himself and all the world. Never—he thought—had fate been so hard upon him as to-day, and never—so he fancied—had he loved his wife and children so dearly as now, when all ways were closed to him. In the morning the baker would bring his bill for the third time, he had already been threatened with the bailiff and a summons. How should he find a way out of it? He hardly owned a halter to hang himself with!—He stopped again in a great snowdrift, unbuttoned his coat, and took a few small coins from his waiscoatwaistcoat [sic] pocket with his swollen fingers, and held them in the hollow of his hand. He stood a moment counting them carefully, and then, with a loud sobbing sigh, clenched his hands and started again.

When at length he reached his home, and found the gate in the tumbledown fence, fear and shame—as they always did—made him for the moment perfectly sober. He took off his heavy boots in the passage, and crept softly in his stocking feet into the bedroom. It was crowded with children's beds, and a night-light was burning on a chair by his wife's bed.

He gave a sigh of relief. His wife's eyes were closed, her thin hand was folded under her pale cheek, and she seemed to be sound asleep. But hardly had he begun to undress, than he heard her move her head, and when he looked round he met a glance from her large, brown eyes, whose