Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 4).djvu/255

 A name was called, and forth another stepped,
 * one pale as snow upon the glacier's edge.
 * They bade the youth advance; he reached the table;
 * we saw his right hand swaddled in a clout;-
 * he gasped, he swallowed, battling after words,-
 * but, though the Captain urged him, found no voice.
 * Ah yes, at last! Then with his cheek aflame,
 * his tongue now failing him, now stammering fast,
 * he mumbled something of a scythe that slipped
 * by chance, and shore his finger to the skin.
 * Straightway a silence fell upon the room.
 * Men bandied meaning glances; they made mouths;
 * they stoned the boy with looks of silent scorn.
 * He felt the hail-storm, but he saw it not.
 * Then up the Captain stood, the grey old man;
 * he spat, and pointed forth, and thundered "Go!"
 * And the lad went. On both sides men fell back,
 * till through their midst he had to run the gauntlet.
 * He reached the door; from there he took to flight;-
 * up, up he went,-through wood and over hillside,
 * up through the stone-slips, rough, precipitous.
 * He had his home up there among the mountains.-
 * It was some six months later he came here,
 * with mother, and betrothed, and little child.
 * He leased some ground upon the high hillside,
 * there where the waste lands trend away towards Lomb.
 * He married the first moment that he could;
 * he built a house; he broke the stubborn soil;
 * he