"What is this folly?" she exclaimed, striking her staff fiercely into the ground. "Art mad or bewitched?"
Ulrika looked up,--her plain face swollen and stained with weeping.
"O Lord, have mercy upon me! O Lord, forgive me!" she moaned. "I did not know it--how could I know?"
Lovisa grew so impatient that she seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently.
"Know what?" she cried; "know what?"
"Sigurd is my son!" said Ulrika, with a sort of solemn resignation,--then, with a sudden gesture, she threw her hands above her head, crying, "My son, my son! The child I thought I had killed! The Lord be praised I did not murder him!"
Lovisa Elsland seemed stupefied with surprise. "Is this the truth?" she asked at last, slowly and incredulously.
"The truth, the truth!" cried Ulrika passionately. "It is always the truth that comes to light! He is my child, I tell you! . . . I gave him that scar!" She paused, shuddering, and continued in a lower tone, "I tried to kill him with a knife, but when the blood flowed, it sickened me, and I could not! He was an infant abortion--the evil fruit of an evil deed--and I threw him out to the waves,--as I told you, long ago. You have had good use of my confession, Lovisa Elsland; you have held me in your power by means of my secret, but now--"
The old woman interrupted her with a low laugh of contempt and malice.
"As the parents are, so are the children!" she said scornfully. "Your lover must have been a fine man, Ulrika, if the son is like his father!"
Ulrika glared at her vengefully, then drew herself up with an air of defiance.
"I care nothing for your taunts, Lovisa Elsland!" she said. "You can do me no harm! All is over between us! I will help in no mischief against the Güldmars. Whatever their faults, they saved--my child!"
"Is that so great a blessing?" asked Lovisa ironically.
"It makes your threats useless," answered Ulrika. "You cannot call me murderess again!"
"Coward and fool!" shrieked Lovisa. "Was it your intent that the child should live? Were you not glad to think it dead? And cannot I spread the story of your infamy through all the villages where you are known? Is not the wretched boy himself a living witness of the attempt you made to kill him? Does not that scar speak against you? Would not Olaf Güldmar relate the story of the child's rescue to any one that asked him? Would you like all Bosekop to know of your intrigue with an escaped criminal, who was afterwards caught and hung! The virtuous Ulrika--the zealous servant of the Gospel--the pious, praying Ulrika!" and the old woman trembled with rage and excitement. "Out of my power? Never, never! As long as there is breath in my body I will hold you down! Not a murderess, you say--?"