The Colour-Sergeant rides behind his old horse, Kalle, which is so noticeably small that everyone he meets in the road turns to look after it. But, on the other hand, no one turns to look at the horse's owner.
Driving past Gunnarsby Inn, he sees two young girls standing at the well. He salutes them with a flourish of his whip, and from force of habit gives them one of his most seductive smiles, but receives in return an indifferent glance. The girls do not drop the well bucket in wonder, or stand rapt with cheeks aglow, to gaze after him.
Colour-Sergeant von Wachenfeldt gives his horse a lash of the whip. He is no fool. He knows that his hair is gray and his face full of wrinkles, that his moustache is thin and faded, that one eye is filmed with a gray cataract, while the other, having been operated upon, is distorted by a magnifying monocle. He knows that he is old and nothing to look at now; yet he feels that people should not entirely forget what he once was. True, he has no better home nowadays than two hired rooms at a farmhouse in Stor Kil Parish. His only possessions are a horse, a carriole, a sleigh, and a few pieces of furniture, and his only subordinate is a crotchety old serving woman. For all that, he thinks it should not be completely forgotten that once he was Vackerfeldt, the celebrated Vackerfeldt.
He sits there in a mangy old fur coat and a still shabbier seal-skin cap. He wears thick lynx mit-
