More and more people kept gathering round the things to be auctioned off. The men looked wonderingly at many of the farming tools, which were of such old-time make that it was difficult to guess what they had been used for. A few spectators had the temerity to laugh at the old sleighs some of which were from ancient times and were gorgeously painted in red and green; and the harnesses that went with them were studded with white shells, and fringed with tassels of many colours.
Mother Stina seemed to see the old Ingmarssons driving slowly in these old sleighs, going to a party or coming home from a church wedding, with a bride seated beside them. "Many good people are leaving the parish," she sighed. For to her it was as if all the old Ingmars had gone on living at the farm up to that very day, when their implements and their old carts and sleds were being hawked about.
"I wonder where Ingmar is keeping himself, and how he feels? When it seems so dreadful to me, what must it be for him?"
The weather being so fine, the auctioneer proposed that they carry out all the things that were to go under the hammer, so as to avoid any overcrowding of the rooms. So maids and farm hands carried out boxes and chests, all painted in tulips and roses, Some of them had been standing in the attic, undisturbed, for centuries. They also brought out silver jugs and old-fashioned copper kettles, spinning-wheels and carders, and all kinds of odd-looking weaving appliances. The peasant women gathered around all these old treasures, picking them up and turning them over.
Mother Stina had not intended to buy anything, when she remembered that there was supposed to be a loom here on which could be woven the finest damask, and went up to look for it. Just then a maid came out with a huge Bible, which, with its thick leather bindings and its brass clasps and mountings, was so heavy that she could hardly carry it.
Mother Stina was as astounded as if some one had struck her in the face; and went back to her seat. She knew, of course, that no one nowadays reads these old Bibles, with their obsolete and antiquated language, but just the same it seemed strange that Karin would want to sell it.
It was perhaps the very Bible the old housewife was reading when they came and told her that her husband, the great-grandfather of young Ingmar, had been killed by a bear. Everything that Mother Stina saw had something to tell her. The old silver buckles lying on the table had been taken from the trolls in Mount Klack by an Ingmar Ingmarsson. In the rickety chaise over yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, fox here comes Ingmar Ingmarsson."
She used to wonder why it was that her mother always wanted her to curtsy to Ingmar Ingmarsson; she had never been so particular when it came to the judge or the bailiff.
Afterward she was told that when her mother was a little girl and went to church with her mother, the latter had always nudged her and said: 'Now you must curtsy, Stina, for here comes Ingmar Ingmarsson."
"God knows," sighed Mother Stina, "it's not only because I had expected that Gertrude would some day have been mistress here that I grieve, but it seems to me as if the whole parish were done for."