His mother’s picture stretched out her beringed hand and positively commanded him to obey.  There had always been something excessively awe-inspiring in his mother when she came in her black silk dress with many flounces.  The big, shining gold brooch, the heavy, rattling gold chain had always frightened him.  If she had worn her market-clothes, in a striped head-cloth and with an oil-cloth apron, covered with fish-scales and fish eyes, he would not have been quite so overawed by her.  The end of it was that he promised to get married.  And then his mother’s portrait crept up into the frame again.

The next morning old Mattsson woke in great trouble.  It never occurred to him to disobey his mother’s portrait; it knew of course what was best for him.  But he shuddered nevertheless at the time that was now coming.

The same day he made an offer of marriage to the plainest daughter of the poorest fisherman, a little creature, whose head was drawn down between her shoulders and who had a projecting under-jaw.  The parents said yes, and the day when he was to go to the town and publish the bans was appointed.

The road from the fishing-village to the town passes over windy marshes and swampy cow-pastures.  It is two miles long, and there is a tradition that the inhabitants of the fishing-village are so rich that they could pave it with shining silver coins.  It would give the road a strange attraction.  Glimmering like a fish’s belly, it would wind with its white scales through clumps of sedge and pools filled with water-bugs and melancholy bullfrogs.  The daisies and almond-blossoms which adorn that forsaken ground would be mirrored in the shining silver coins; thistles would stretch out protecting thorns over them, and the wind would find a ringing sounding-board when it played on the thatched roof of the cow-barns and on telephone-wires.

Perhaps old Mattsson would have found some comfort if he could have set his heavy sea boots on ringing silver, for it is certain that he for a time had to go that way oftener than he liked.

He had not had “clean papers.”  The bans could not be published.  It came from his having run away from his bride the last time.  Some time passed before the clergyman could write to the consistory about him and get permission for him to contract a new marriage.

As long as this time of waiting lasted, old Mattsson came to the town every week.  He sat by the door of the pastor’s room and remained there in silent expectation until all had spoken in turn.  Then he rose and asked if the clergyman had anything for him.  No, he had nothing.

The pastor was amazed at the power that all-conquering love had acquired over that old man.  There he sat in a thick, knitted jersey, high sea-boots and weather-beaten sou’wester with a sharp, clever face and long, gray hair, and waited for permission to get married.  The clergyman thought it strange that the old fisherman should have been seized by so eager a longing.