The Outlaws | Page 6

this pale maiden who was the cause
of Berg's wild hunted life in forest and mountain. He tried to search his
memory for what he had heard about her.
ÊÊ Unn was the daughter of a free peasant. Her mother was dead, and
she ruled in her father's household. This was to her taste, for she was
independent by nature, and had no inclination to give herself to any
husband. Unn and Berg were cousins, and the rumor had long gone
about that Berg liked better to sit with Unn and her maids than to work
at home in his own house. One Christmas, when the great banquet was
to be given in Berg's hall, his wife had invited a monk from Draksmark,
who, she hoped, would show Berg how wrong it was that he should
neglect her for another. Berg and others besides him hated this monk
because of his appearance. He was very stout and absolutely white. The
ring of hair around his bald head, the brows above his moist eyes, the
color of his skin, of his hands, and of his garments, were all white.
Many found him very repulsive to look at.
ÊÊ But the monk was fearless, and as he believed that his words would
have greater weight if many heard them, he rose at the table before all
the guests, and said: "Men call the cuckoo the vilest of birds because he
brings up his young in the nest of others. But here sits a man who takes
no care for his house and his children, and who seeks his pleasure with
a strange woma. Him I will call the vilest of men." Unn rose in her
place. "Berg, this is said to you and to me," she cried. "Never have I
been so shamed, but my father is not here to protect me." She turned to
go, but Berg hurried after her. "Stay where you are," she said. "I do not
wish to see you again." He stopped her in the corridor, and asked her

what he should do that she might stay with him. Her eyes glowed as
she answered that he himself should know best what he must do. Then
Berg went into the hall again and slew the monk.
ÊÊ Berg and Tord thought on awhile with the same thoughts, then Berg
said: "You should have seen her when the white monk fell. My wife
drew the children about her and cursed Unn. She turned the faces of the
children toward her, that they might always remember the woman for
whose sake their father had become a murderer. But Unn stood there so
quiet and so beautiful that the men who saw her trembled. She thanked
me for the deed, and prayed me to flee to the woods at once. She told
me never to become a robber, and to use my knife only in some cause
equally just."
ÊÊ "Your deed had ennobled her," said Tord.
ÊÊ And again Berg found himself astonished at the same thing that had
before now surprized him in the boy. Tord was a heathen, or worse than
a heathen; he never condemned that which was wrong. He seemed to
know no sense of responsibility. What had to come, came. He knew of
God, of Christ, and the Saints, but he knew them only by name, as one
knows the names of the gods of other nations. The ghosts of the
Scheeren Islands were his gods. His mother, learned in magic, had
taught him to believe in the spirits of the dead. And then it was that
Berg undertook a task which was as foolish as if he had woven a rope
for his own neck. He opened the eyes of this ignorant boy to the power
of God, the Lord of all Justice, the avenger of wrong, who condemned
sinners to the pangs of hell everlasting. And he taught him to love
Christ and His Mother, and all the saintly men and women who sit
before the throne of God praying that His anger may be turned away
from sinners. He taught him all that mankind has learned to do to soften
the wrath of God. He told him of the long trains of pilgrims journeying
to the holy places; he told him of those who scourged themselves in
their remorse; and he told him of the pious monks who flee the joys of
this world.
ÊÊ The longer he spoke the paler grew the boy and the keener his
attention as his eyes widened at the visions. Berg would have stopped,

but the torrent of his own thoughts carried him away. Night sank down
upon them, the black forest night, where the scream of the owl shrills
ghostly through the stillness. God came so