It was with her Veyergang was joking from the window, and she shook her head and laughed, and looked up for a moment--she dared not answer because of Mrs.Holman.
It was as if a pair of pincers with many claws had suddenly taken hold of Nikolai's heart, and he all at once remembered so vividly the day when he had had Ludvig Veyergang under his fists.
He went back with a weight like lead upon his breast, and sat down on the edge of a ditch in the field, whence he could, unseen, keep an eye upon all who came down the road.
She had looked so much too pretty when she raised her head with that suppressed merriment in her glance.

This was what his thoughts would return to, and he only saw before him what he suffered from.
An hour had passed.

Almost stupidly he had watched one after another come down the road; but all at once his face changed colour.

Ludvig Veyergang was sauntering past, dashing and easy, with his stick held loosely in his hand.

He had red cheeks like a girl, and fine black whiskers beneath the straw hat, and he half closed his grey eyes to look about him, while he hummed softly.
Nikolai gazed despondently after him, as he disappeared down the road.
Again this same old hopelessness before a superior force, this feeling for which he could never find words and vent, unless it some day happened that--he closed his eyes, and there was a compressed, violent expression about his mouth and chin.
There came Silla by Mrs.Holman's side, with bent head, like a willow that is bowed by its growth.