The Snake Pit Read Online Free PDF

Olav of Hestviken and he began to feel the lack of kinsmen, he sent word to Astrid—if she would let him have the child, Arne, he would make the boy heir to his father’s name and goods. Kaare answered that the lad no longer needed the support of his father’s kindred, and both he and Astrid loved Arne Torgilsson far too dearly to send him out to Hestviken to inherit the fortunes of the Hestvik men. So Olav fetched home Aasa, who had served there at one time, and the son that she had had by Torgils; but he was not long in life—
    “But these are all old matters, and I deem that we should now forget our enmity and you young ones should claim kinship and meet in charity. I believe that Arne of Hestbæk and you would like each other. You must go thither with me one day, Olav, and greet the kinsfolk you have in this part of the land.”
    Olav said he would do so more than gladly. But then he asked:
    “That word you spoke of the Hestvik men’s fortunes—what meant you by that?”
    The priest looked as though the question troubled him.
    “You know that your great-grandfather was not blest in his kindred. That was the time when he sat there in Hestviken with the madman-his other children he had lost, all but Borgny, who was in a convent, and he had no true-born heir to follow him other than the little lad Audun, your father—and him Ingolf’s widow had taken with her, when she went home to the place she had come from, south in Elvesyssel. So it may well have seemed to Kaare and Astrid that the race would not prosper after him.”
    Olav said pensively: “’Tis true for all that, Sira Benedikt, favoured of fortune they were not, from all that my kinsman has told me of them.”
    “They were brave men and loyal, Olav, and that is worth more than good fortune.”
    “Not Torgils,” said Olav. “I knew not this thing of him. I knew naught else but that he had been witless all his days—old Olav has never spoken his name.”
    “Bitterly as I have hated him,” said Sira Benedikt, “I will yet tell you the truth of him—he was a brave man—and with men he kept faith. And all say that no goodlier youth has been seen within the memory of man in the country about Folden. Ay, ’tis strange I should have liked you so well, when first I saw you, for you bear great resemblance to Torgils. But then Arne too is like his father, and his daughters—methought perchance you had seen it, when all three came in—they might well be your sisters. You all have the same abrupt little noses and the white skin—and the same fair hair, pale as thistledown; nay, so handsome as he was you are not—though I hated him, I must say with the rest, a fairer man have I never seen. So there may well be truth in what they report of him, that he had no need to run after women or to allure them with wooing arts and false words. They followed him of themselves-as though bewitched if he did but fix those strange blue-green eyes of his upon them. Ay, you have the same light eyes, you too, Olav—”
    Olav had to laugh at this—and he laughed on, trying to laugh off his sense of oppressive discomfort.
    “Nay, Sira Benedikt—I cannot be very like my kinsman Torgils—in the eyes at least. For I have never marked that I could charm women—”
    “You are like him, Olav, though you be not so handsome—and you have the same light eyes, both you and these little maids of mine. But the evil power of bewitching folk dwells not in the eyes of any of you, God be praised. And this prating of misfortune that is thought to pursue certain houses and kindreds—it may have been so in heathen times, I am ready to believe that. But you are surely wise enough now to lay your life and destiny in the hands of God Almighty and not to believe such things.—God be gracious to you, my Olav—I wish you happiness and blessing in your marriage, and that your race may be called fortune’s favourites from now on!”
    The priest drank to him. Olav drank, but could not bring