Book Three — The Departure Of The Pilgrims

One beautiful morning in July, a long train of carts and wagons sets out from the Ingmar Farm. The Hellgumists have completed their arrangements and are leaving — the first stage of their journey being the long drive to the railway station. It is the departure the novel has been building toward since Karin's conversion in Chapter 7.

Moving toward the village, the procession must pass a wretched hovel called Mucklemire, home to the worst family in the parish: dirty, ragged children who shriek at passing vehicles, a drunken old crone who usually sits by the roadside, a quarrelsome husband and wife. Today, as the Jerusalem-farers approach, the old crone is standing erect and sober at the roadside, on the very spot where she usually sits drunk. Her grandchildren are washed and combed. She is doing them honor.

The pilgrims slow their horses as they pass. Then all of them — grown-ups and children alike — burst into tears. Nothing has moved them as much as Beggar Lina standing sober. They cry softly; the children wail. When the last wagon has passed, Beggar Lina also begins to weep. The departure of the pilgrims is over. Jerusalem begins with this — not with triumph, not with faith vindicated, but with a drunkard standing sober in the road to watch her neighbors leave.