When one annoyance follows close upon another, the feeling induced is like that of a blow falling upon a place where there is a wound already. First of all to-day, the old man had been outvoted in a school committee matter; it was against that wretched parish schoolmaster. When, in the midst of this annoyance, his son-in-law came and asked for a fresh advance upon his inheritance, it seemed to the old man like downright extortion; but when, an hour later, he heard that Wangen, the merchant, had failed, the couple of thousand krones for which he himself was liable assumed the proportions of an overwhelming calamity. "I shall soon be keeping half the parish," he thought. "People really seem to be doing their very best to rob me of my last shilling."
The horse was a long, black stallion, with a red-brown wavy mane and easy motion. The old man himself was almost hidden in a great bearskin coat with the collar turned up. The darkness was beginning to fall out on the ice, and one by one lights appeared in the farms upon the snow-covered country surrounding the bay.
"And how when my wife gets to know of this?" he thought, as the sledge-bells jingled and the ice flew from the horse's hoofs. He had put his name to Wangen's paper without her knowledge. It must have been about three or four years ago, and the guarantee was to help Wangen to obtain larger credit with a merchant in the capital. And even earlier than that, he had promised his wife not to stand surety for any one at all, for they had lost quite enough. And now? "How in the world did he manage to fool me that time?" thought Knut. But even the wisest men have their weak moments when they are good and kind. They were both in town, and Wangen had stood a good dinner at the Carl Johan Hotel. And afterwards--this happened. That had been an expensive dinner! And now with the feeling of dread at the prospect of having to stand shame-faced before his wife, and confess that he had broken his word, Norby felt a rising dislike to Wangen, who was of course to blame for it all. "He knew what he was about, that fellow, with his dinner!" And involuntarily the old man began to recall a number of bad things about Wangen; there was a kind of self-defence in feeling enraged with him.