“Petra!” shrieked Pedro, and turning, fled into the house as if he had encountered the Evil One himself.
But as the pallor of terror and that of the direst wrath bear a close resemblance to each other, Petra supposed he had rushed in after his gun. Fear overpowered her, she already felt the shot in her back, and as the garden gate was just then broken open from the outside, she bolted through, her dark hair flowing behind her like a stream of terror, her eyes flaming; the dog, whom she met in her fight, turned and pursued her, barking, and then she bolted into the house, stumbling against her mother who was just coming in from the kitchen with a dish of soup in her hand. The girl fell on the dish, the soup streamed over the floor, and a “the deuce take it!” from the mother, accompanied the fall, But as Petra lay sprawling there in the soup, she bawled:—
“He is going to shoot me, mother, to shoot me.”
“Who is going to shoot you, you troll?”
“He—Pedro Ohlsen! We were taking his apples!”—she never dared speak anything but truth.
“Of whom are you talking, child?”
“Of Pedro Ohlsen; he is after me with a big gun; he means to shoot me!”
