close behind, trying her best to conciliate him. "Can't
you forgive me for my mistake of a moment in thinking you had
fought with Hellgum? I could hardly have thought differently."

"You were very ready to believe your own brother a murderer,"
Ingmar retorted, without giving her a look. He still walked on.
When the grass blades he had trampled down came up again, blood
dripped from them. It was only after Karin had noticed the peculiar
way in which Ingmar had spoken Hellgum's name, that she began to
realize how he hated the preacher. At the same time she saw what a
big thing he had done.

"Every one will be singing your praises for what you did to-day,
Ingmar; it will be known far and wide," she said. "You don't want
to die and miss all the honours, do you?"

Ingmar laughed scornfully. Then he turned toward her a face that
was pale and haggard. "Why don't you go home, Karin?" he said. "I
know well enough whom you would prefer to help." His steps became
more and more uncertain, and now, where he had walked, there was a
continuous streak of blood on the ground.

Karin was about beside herself at the sight of all this blood. The
great love which she had always felt or Ingmar kindled with new
ardour. Now she was proud of her brother, and thought him a stout
branch of the good old family tree.

"Oh, Ingmar!" she cried, "you'll have to answer before God and your
fellowmen if you go on spilling your life's blood in this way. You
know, if there is anything I can do to make you want to live, you
have only to speak."

Ingmar halted, and put his arm around the stem of a tree to hold
himself up. Then, with a cynical laugh, he said: "Perhaps you'll
send Hellgum back to America?"

Karin stood looking down at the pool of blood that was forming
around Ingmar's left foot, pondering over the thing her brother
wanted her to do. Could it be that he expected her to leave the
beautiful Garden of Paradise where she had lived all winter, and go
back to the wretched world of sin she had come out of?

Ingmar turned round squarely; his face was waxen, the skin across
his temples was tightly drawn, and his nose was like that of a dead
person; but his under lip protruded with a determination that he
had never before shown, and the set look about the mouth was
sharply defined. It was not likely that he would modify his demand.

"I don't think that Hellgum and I can live in the same parish," he
said, "but it's plain enough that I must ma