"The man he attacked is dead--died at midday, and the murderer is now sitting in chains." Silla did not know how it was that the door was shut behind her again, and did not feel that it was snowing thickly and silently, while the light from the lamps shone through a veil of snow--did not know how she had reached the bridge again.
That was where she ought to be.
Nikolai was sitting down there with handcuffs on, and stretching up his hands, and crying--crying to her! * * * * * The next morning a bit of a dress was seen sticking up out of the loose snow in the dam.

Her skull had been broken in the high fall from the bridge against the edge of the ice.
* * * * * It was proved that young Veyergang's death had been caused directly by the blow that had been dealt him which had penetrated to the brain.
And the impression was not to be softened by Nikolai's behaviour before the court.

He stood there with wild sorrow in his heart over Silla's death, and answered that if Veyergang had had seven lives, he would have taken them all.
When questioned as to his parents, he at first declared that he had never known any; but when pressed further, he exclaimed, pointing at a large-boned woman who was sitting, crying on a bench: "Her name is Barbara.

They say she is my mother; but he who took away my happiness in this world got both her affection and her mother's milk." Barbara wailed.
His father?
It might be the whole town!--he looked round on the officials of the court.
This was an answer which fully confirmed the opinion which had been general from the first in this horrible, sensational murder case--that the court had here before it a bold criminal nature, early hardened in the dregs of town life.
The police still had a pretty clear remembrance of this individual from his violent conduct and other doubtful circumstances under a charge of theft.

And it appeared from his past life, which was thoroughly sifted, that from his earliest childhood he had evinced dangerous tendencies, so that there had even been talk of placing him in an asylum for depraved children.
There were repeated facts brought forward from the time of his apprenticeship in Haegberg's smithy, which proved that he was an individual given to fighting and violence.
Not longer ago than last year he had threatened Olaves' life, or so the witnesses interpreted it; and it appeared in the examination in court, that on the evening in question he had persistently plotted against the deceased, and had, just before the perpetration of the deed, declared his murderous intention in the threat: "It's the last time in your life that you'll say that!" There was undeniably an extenuating circumstance in the fact that there was a love-story connected with the affair, and that the act seemed to be prompted by jealousy.