Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/307

looked upon the deacon as a raw young schoolmaster set in a position above his rights. The mistress of Amy Travis was very justly vexed with the girl's conduct, and threatened to tell Ernest the whole circumstances. But her husband, to whom she confided her anger, remembering the lad Ernest, and thinking of him with compassion, counselled her to let Amy bear her own burdens and Ernest his as he met them. This was after it had leaked out in the house that the deacon had proposed to Amy, which of course it did when it became known that that very evening Hjorth had removed all his belongings to a farm-house a mile away, and had apprised the priest of the fact that he could no longer stay at the inn.

A general break-up of the party then occurred. Amy's employers moved on upon their travels, taking her with them; the priest with his sad-eyed wife left for their holiday, and Hjorth was alone. But before he went, the priest, who on his part had thought the deacon extremely foolish, took upon himself the task of informing him as much. He had lived beyond his first feelings of sympathy for the lover and disgust for the girl, and blamed Hjorth pretty plainly for this presumptuous sin of youth, as he termed it. Hjorth was abandoned, sore and miserable. What wonder that his mind turned back to Johanna, the girl at Helga farm, whose deep devotion to himself had been unmistakable? He locked the thought of her and her adulation in his heart, however, struck body and soul into his work, and upon the return of the priest to his parish, departed to the town with praises ringing in his ears. The priest had had a holiday, one out of half a dozen in a lifetime, and Hjorth was flourishing as young men can on thoughts of love and what love means. Strangely enough, this rebuff had failed to teach him its most obvious lesson. And yet why write strangely? A wise Norwegian proverb has it that 'tisthe