And no one would persuade her either that Holman's hardly-earned week's wages could vanish like steam from a kettle.

A half-starved apprentice-boy, walking beside a well-filled pocket--any one could understand what the result of that would be.
Master Nikolai had only carefully and craftily watched his time, when he knew that Silla had her father's money in her pocket, to get it shuffled into his own.
Matters were not improved by Silla in her obstinacy declaring that he had not so much as seen the money--as if Nikolai would take a farthing from _her_! This last remark sealed his fate--there should be no concealment of his conduct on Mrs.Holman's part.
There was a commotion in the forge-yard, when the nest day a police-officer came and arrested Nikolai.

He was to be taken to the police-station for having defrauded a young girl on Saturday evening of the whole of her father's week's wages.
But when they were gone, Anders Berg swore, as he brought the sledge-hammer down on the anvil, that that Nikolai had never done.

The others--Jan Peter, and Katrinus, and Bernt Johan Jakobsen and Petter Evensen--they thought nothing; but to bring the police into a respectable work-yard! He had better get work in some other place after this! For the first moment Nikolai had only one sensation--the paralysing fear by which a first acquaintance with the police is always accompanied.

The feeling that he had a good conscience did indeed leap up within him, but only to die away again immediately.