CHAPTER XII.
THE FAIR AND THE CONVICT The winter was passing.
It was at the time of the fair in the beginning of February.

The streets swarmed with people and the snow in the thaw had turned to powdered sugar with the traffic.
A motley row of stalls stretched from market-place to market-place.
Trumpets brayed, buffoons shouted, the lottery-wheel went round, the cryers howled.

Music filled the air in volleys of blustering flourishes, and amidst it all, over the whole town, pleasure-seeking, dancing and merriment, until far on into the night.
Dull noise and the sound of music penetrated up to the manufacturing part of the town.

In the evenings the town lay beneath it in increased illumination.
There was a kind of intoxication in the air, and there was many an impatient, longing soul up there of such as look severely upon themselves, while plenty of the looser sort streamed down.
From year to year the accounts grew of the large fair-balls, of the trumpets, the coloured lamps in the garden, and the matadores who stood treat.

It was tempting and attractive.
As early as the second day Kristofa came, excited and eager, with a solution of the question as far as she and Gunda and Silla were concerned--money for tickets and cakes too, for all three! She behaved most mysteriously, talked all the time of a certain person, whom she dared not, for all the world, mention.
Silla had never before been to anything of the kind, the most she had ever done was to stand outside among the longing crowd, who had to content themselves with looking at the coloured lamps and listening to the music.