# Mårbacka/Part 2, Chapter 8

It happened in the year 1810, when Grandmother Lagerlöf was a young wife and the mother of two little children. She sat one evening by the east window of the kitchen-bedroom; dusk had fallen and 'twas too dark to see to sew. Being well on in March the tallow dips were about used up, so she had taken up her knitting, for her knitting needles she could ply in the deepest darkness.
All at once something made her look out. She could hardly believe her eyes! But a little while before it had been fine clear weather, and now there was a blinding snowstorm. The air was so thick with snow she could barely distinguish the firelight from the window of the manservants' hall directly opposite. The lashing wind swished the snow against the house, and in just the short time she had been sitting there the drifts had piled so high that bushes and fences were buried under them. Darkness had descended quickly with the coming of the storm, yet she descried several large animals stalking through the drifts toward the farmyard. "I hope the maids will be mindful, and not go out for fire​wood," she said to herself, "for the graylegs are out to-night."
Shortly afterwards she heard a piercing cry and saw a wolf lumber past her window with something in its mouth that struggled and fought. She thought it looked like a child. But whose child could it be? Her own little ones were right beside her, and there were no other children on the farm. Close behind the first wolf came another; it, too, had a child in its gape. Grandmother couldn't sit still any longer. She jumped up so suddenly she knocked over the chair, and rushed through the kitchen out into the yard.… Then she stood stock still. Before her was the calm, beautiful spring evening; not a sign of snow—not a wolf in sight.
She must have fallen asleep over her knitting, she thought, and been dreaming. Yet she felt that back of it all lay something serious.
"We'll have to take precious good care of the little ones," she said to the maids. "That was no dream, it was a warning."
However, the children thrived and waxed fat and rosy. The dream, or vision, or whatever it was, soon passed out of mind, like much else of the same sort.
Along in August a company of poor soldiers came to Mårbacka. The men were ragged, famished, and ill. Their bodies were nothing but skin-and-bone and in their eyes was the look of the ravening wolf. The mark of death was on them all.
​They were from Fryksände and other parishes in the northern part of Fryksdalen, they said. But now that they were nearing home they feared their own people would not recognize them. Only two years before they had gone forth as well, strong men. What would the folks at home think of getting them back in such a state they were only fit to be put in the ground. They had not been on the battle field, they had only marched to and fro in cold and hunger. Their fight had been with disease and neglect.
They were many thousand strong when they marched away, but one thousand after another had succumbed. Great numbers had been sent out in open barges on the raging sea in midwinter. How it had gone with those voyagers none knew; but when the boats drifted ashore the crews sat at their oars dead and literally encased in ice. These surviving militia-men, now returning on their own, had often been stoned away from farms and villages on their homeward tramp. What seemed to prey upon them most was that they had not been sent into battle and shot to death, but must still drag on in ceaseless misery. They knew the sort they were—covered with vermin, reeking with filth, and horrible to behold. They did not ask for a bed to lie on or the shelter of a roof; they only begged a few armfuls of straw and a dry mound to rest on.
At Mårbacka the poor soldiers were not greeted with stones. The Paymaster of the Regiment was away, but his wife gave them permission to camp in the backyard, ​just inside the gates. Huge kettles of porridge and gruel were prepared for the men, and all the clothing that could be spared was turned over to them. The servants continually gathered round their camp to listen to their tales of what they had passed through. Not all could talk, however. Some were too listless to answer when spoken to; they seemed hardly to know who they were or where they were going.
There was great consternation and wonder over these men who had become so changed. Reports of them spread far and wide, and people came long distances to see them.
"That one, they tell me, is the son of Göran Persa," said a stranger who had stood a long while regarding the poor wretches. "But I knew Göran Persa's son; he was a fine lad; there's not a feature the same."
One day a poor widow came wandering to Mårbacka. She was from a little backwoods croft away up north, where, in a perpetual struggle with hunger and want, she managed to sustain life in her body.
"Is there any one among ye by the name of Börje Knutsson?" she inquired, gazing anxiously at the sick yeomen.
No one answered. The men sat on the ground with their legs drawn up, their chins resting on their knees. They would sit like that for hours without moving.
"If there's any one here named Börje Knutsson he must make himself known," said the widow, "for he's my son."
​None moved or said a word, none so much as raised his eyes.
"I have wept for the lad every day since he went away," continued the poor woman. "If he's there among ye why doesn't he stand up and say so, for I shouldn't know him again."
Silence.
The woman slowly went her way. To the first person she met afterwards she related her experience.
"I thought until now I'd go out of my mind if my son did not come back," she said, "but now I thank my God that he's not among those skeletons!"
The militia-men rested a week at Mårbacka, and then went on, somewhat strengthened.
But they had left the bloody flux in their wake. Everyone on the place became desperately ill. All recovered save Grandmother's two little children, who were of too tender an age to resist the virulence of the sickness.
When the two children lay in their coffins. Grandmother said to herself: "If I had done like the others, if instead of harbouring those men I had driven them away with stones, my little ones would have been alive now."
But as that thought crossed her mind, she remembered her vision of that evening in the spring wherein the wolves carried off the children. "Our Lord is not to blame," she said. "He forewarned me." The loss of the children was not due to her act of mercy, but rather to her thoughtlessness in not having taken proper precautions to guard them against contagion.
​When she realized that after all it was her own fault the children were gone, her grief was overwhelming. "I shall never get over it," she said. "I can never be the same again."
Her despair was increased by her fears for the husband—how would he take the loss of their children? He had not been at home in several months. The old despondency had perhaps come over him again, so that he dared not come home. Where he was then she did not know; so could not even send him word of what had happened. Anyway, he would surely regard the death of his children as a visitation from God for his marrying her, and never come back. She was not so certain but he would be right in this. It were best perhaps they never met again.
All on the place were much concerned about her. What to do to help her they did not know. But Long-Bengt, who was the oldest of the servitors, was not afraid to act sometimes on his own responsibility. He set off for Kymsberg one morning in quest of the master. This time he was not two whole days getting back. He actually found the Paymaster of the Regiment and stated his errand. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the master ordered a fresh horse put to the chaise. They drove all night without a stop, and reached Mårbacka in the morning.
Now the husband was not glum and difficult when he came. He took his wife tenderly in his arms, dried her tears, and spoke loving words of comfort to her. It ​seemed as if then for the first time, when seeing her so crushed and sorrowful, was he able to reveal the full depth of his love.
"And I thought I should lose you, too!" she said.
"I'm not one that grief can drive away," said he. "Did you think I would desert you because of your great compassion?"
In that moment she understood his heart as never before. She knew that in peaceful and happy days she must rely on herself—which she was well able to do; but in sorrow and suffering and times of stress he would always be by her side—her stay and comfort.