This Thomas, her son, was a strange child.
He had a Norseman's taste for the fabulous and
fantastic, and although he never heard a tale of
Necken or the Hulder, he would often startle
his mother by the most fanciful combinations
of imagined events, and by bolder personifications
than ever sprung from the legendary soil
of the Norseland. She always took care to
check him whenever he indulged in these imaginary
flights, and he at last came to look upon
them as something wrong and sinful. The boy,
as he grew up, often strikingly reminded her of
her father, as, indeed, he seemed to have
inherited more from her own than from Halvard's
race. Only the bright flaxen hair and his square,
somewhat clumsy stature might have told him
to be the latter's child. He had a hot temper,
and often distressed his mother by his stubbornness;
and then there would come a great burst
of repentance afterwards, which distressed her
still more. For she was afraid it might be a
sign of weakness. "And strong he must be,"
said she to herself, "strong enough to overcome
all resistance, and to conquer a great name for
himself, strong enough to bless a mother who
brought him into the world nameless."
Strange to say, much as she loved this child,
she seldom caressed him. It was a penance she
had imposed upon herself to atone for her guilt.
Only at times, when she had been sitting up late,
and her eyes would fall, as it were, by accident
upon the little face on the pillow, with the
sweet unconsciousness of sleep resting upon it
like a soft, invisible veil, would she suddenly
throw herself down over him, kiss him, and
whisper tender names in his ear, while her tears
fell hot and fast on his yellow hair and his rosy
countenance.
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