Out in the middle of the open, fertile country, where the plough was busyturning up the soil round the numerous cheerful little houses, stood a gloomybuilding that on every side turned bare walls toward the smiling world. Nopanes of glass caught the ruddy glow of the morning and evening sun and threwback its quivering reflection; three rows of barred apertures drank in all thelight of day with insatiable avidity. They were always gaping greedily, andseen against the background of blue spring sky, looked like holes leading intothe everlasting darkness. In its heavy gloom the mass of masonry towered abovethe many smiling homes, but their peaceable inhabitants did not seem to feeloppressed. They ploughed their fields right up to the bare walls, and whereverthe building was visible, eyes were turned toward it with an expression thattold of the feeling of security that its strong walls gave.
Like a landmark the huge building towered above everything else. It might verywell have been a temple raised to God’s glory by a grateful humanity, soimposing was it; but if so, it must have been in by-gone ages, for nodwellings—even for the Almighty—are built nowadays in so barbaric astyle, as if the one object were to keep out light and air! The massive wallswere saturated with the dank darkness within, and the centuries had weatheredtheir surface and made on it luxuriant cultures of fungus and mould, and yetthey still seemed as if they could stand for an eternity.
The building was no fortress, however, nor yet a temple whose dim recesses werethe abode of the unknown God. If you went up to the great, heavy door, whichwas always closed you could read above the arch the one word Prison inlarge letters and below it a simple Latin verse that with no littlepretentiousness proclaimed:
“I am the threshold to all virtue and wisdom;
Justice flourishes solely for my sake.”
One day in the middle of spring, the little door in the prison gate opened, anda tall man stepped out and looked about him with eyes blinking at the lightwhich fell upon his ashen-white face. His step faltered and he had to lean forsupport against the wall; he looked as if he were about to go back again, buthe drew a deep breath and went out on to the open ground.
The spring breeze made a playful assault upon him, tried to ruffle hisprison-clipped, slightly gray hair, which had been curly and fair when last ithad done so, and penetrated gently to his bare body like a soft, cool hand.“Welcome, Pelle!” said the sun, as it peeped into his distendedpupils in which the darkness of the prison-cell still lay brooding. Not amuscle of his face moved, however; it was as though hewn out of stone. Only thepupils of his eyes contracted so violently as to be almost painful, but hecontinued to look earnestly before him. Whenever he saw any one, he stopped andgazed eagerly, perhaps in the hope that it was some one coming to meet him.
As he turned into the King’s Road some one called to him. He turned roundin sudden, intense joy, but then his head dropped and he went on withoutanswering. It was only a tramp, who was standing half out of a ditch in a fielda little way off, beckoning to him. He came running over the ploughed field,crying hoarsely: “Wait a little, can’t you? Here have I beenwaiting for company all day, so you might as well wait a little!”
He was a broad-shouldered, rather puffy-looking fellow