Sivert looked at the two things--first one, then the other, a hundred times. Bottle--iron pipe--iron pipe--bottle. He thrust out his wooden shoe and kicked at the pipe to make a change. There was a brass tap on it. It emerged from the litter on the floor like a revelation.
"Father's big tap," he burst out in wondering recognition. They must have forgotten it. No, not forgotten; it had been left here for him to take with him.
Half an hour later he was clattering along at a sharp trot out of the town, with the tap under his coat.
The poplars stood in two endless rows with their leafless branches pointing stiffly heavenwards. Only one thing to do now--get along as fast as he could. His heart might hop and thump as it pleased, like a dry nut in its shell; he had no use for that now--only for his legs.
Villages showed up ahead of him and faded away behind, all nothing to do with him. It did not enter his head to ask for food anywhere, or even to rest. Only go on, on, along the road, past ditches where the snow lay streaked with wind-borne dust, and tufts of withered grass above; past flattened heaps of road-metal that lay like so many nameless graves. Trotting or dragging his feet, he went on past buzzing telegraph poles, passing or following heavy-laden milk-carts or solitary peasants with kerchiefs bound over their ears as a protection from the biting cold.
He spoke to no one until evening was drawing on; then, an old woman told him there was but another mile to Knarreby.
This came to him as something of a shock; he felt there ought to be, say, four or six miles more yet.
He slackened his pace, and at the same time his mind began working again.
All the way till now, through those twenty-four icy miles, he had had a feeling that he was running straight into his mother's welcoming arms. Now the picture changed incomprehensibly. Her open arms were turned to clenched fists, and her gentle eyes gave place to his father's glaring fiery orbs. After all, perhaps it was not so simple a matter to run away from one's place and go home!
Thrashings, even kicks, he knew, but how should he ever be able to bear his father's thundering voice when he was angry? Sivert remembered how he had once himself offered his father a brass ladle to beat him with, just to get it over. His father had taken it--yes--and there were dints in it still. Oh, his father's voice was the most terrible thing in the world. It was not thick like Olsen's, or whinnying like the smith's, but a sort of voice that made one feel stiff all over.