e had had a vicar during the winter, and he had never been
in sight before eight; everybody had been vexed that they had to have
such a lazy vicar. Here Uli asked whether it was customary to take the
bride along. No, they said; folks seldom waited in the parsonage.
Afterward a good many went back together to get the certificate. But the
bashful ones, or those that thought the pastor would have cause to say
something to them, would come right back to the inn, and only the lads
would go for the certificate. After Freneli had declined to go along and
had bidden Uli to let his master know and send word to have his master
and mistress come, he set out.

In his handsome dress and in the dark room the old pastor did not at
first recognize him, but then was heartily rejoiced. "I heard," he said,
"that you were doing well, were to get a fine lease and a good wife, and
had saved a tidy sum. It gives me great joy to bless a marriage that I
can hope will remain in the Lord. That you have saved something is not
the chief thing; but you wouldn't have it, and people wouldn't have had
so much confidence in you, if you were not honest and God-fearing, and
that's what pleases me most of all. The things of the world and the
things of the spirit are much closer to each other than most people
believe. They think that in order to get along well in the world, you've
got to hang up your Christianity on a nail. But it's just the reverse;
that's what causes the everlasting complaint in the world; that's why
most men make their beds so that they have to lie on nettles. Ask
yourself if you would be as happy now if you had stayed a vagabond,
despised by all. What do you think--what sort of a wedding would you
have had? Just imagine what kind of a wife you would have got, and the
prospects you would have had, and what people would have said when they
saw you going to be married, and then see how it is today; reckon up the
enormous difference. Or what do you think about it? Is blind fortune,
accident, so-called luck, back of it all? Folks are always saying: 'I
don't have any luck; you just can't do anything nowadays.' What do you
think, Uli? Is it only luck? Would you have had this luck if you had
stayed a vagabond? But the misfortune is just that people want to be
happy through luck and not by God-fearing lives on which God's blessing
rests. And so it's quite fitting that those who are only waiting for
luck should be deceived by it, until they come t