and fro. One eye was bound up, and each time she
crossed the kitchen she lifted the bandage and bathed her eye with
something brown in a cup. The eye was bloodshot, and hurt, and
showed the colors of the rainbow, but all the same she was happy.
Indeed, it was the sore eye which put her in such a happy mood. They
were going away from the Crow's Nest, right away and forever, and it
was all on account of her eye.

Lars Peter came home; he had been out for a walk. He hung up his
stick behind the kitchen door. "Well, how's the eye getting on?" he
asked, as he began to take off his boots.

"Oh, it's much better now. And what did the schoolmaster say?"

"Ay, what did he say? He thought it good and right that you should
stand up for your little brothers and sister. But he did not care to
be mixed up in the affair, and after all 'tis not to be wondered
at."

"Why not? He knows how it all happened--and he's so truthful!"

"Hm--well--truthful! When a well-to-do farmer's son's concerned,
then----. He's all right, but he's got his living to make. He's
afraid of losing his post, if he gets up against the farmers, and
they hang together like peas in a pod. He advised me to let it
drop--especially as we're leaving the place. Nothing would come of
it but trouble and rows again. And maybe it's likely enough. They'd
get their own back at the auction--agree not to bid the things up,
or stay away altogether."

"Then you didn't go to the police about it?"

"Ay, but I did. But he thought too there wasn't much to be made of
the case. Oh, and the schoolmaster said you needn't go to school for
the rest of the time--he'd see it was all right. He's a kind man,
even if he is afraid of his skin."

Ditte was not satisfied. It would have done the big boy good to be
well punished. He had been the first to attack Kristian, and had
afterwards kicked her in her eye with his wooden shoe, because she
had stood up for her brother. And she had been certain in her
childish mind that this time they would get compensation--for the
law made no difference whoever the people were.

"If I'd been a rich farmer's daughter, and he had come from the
Crow's Nest, what then?" she asked hoarsely.

"Oh, he'd have got a good thrashing--if not worse!" said the father.
"That's the way we poor people are treated, and can only be thankful
that we don't get fined into the bargain."

"If you meet the boy, won't you give him a good thrashing?" she
asked shortly afte