Book Two — In Zion

After Sunday service, Storm and the pastor discuss the Salvation Army. Storm is dismissive: innovations of that kind don't reach this parish, he says, because he and the pastor stand together. The pastor is more cautious — he knows himself to be a weak man, and he is quietly amused by Storm's certainty. He does not argue; he simply asks how Storm can be so sure. Storm does not answer.

The chapter then follows Storm through the beginnings of what will become the Hellgumist movement. The schoolmaster goes to the mission house, expecting to manage the meeting as he has managed everything else for thirty years. He cannot. The people who are gathering there are his own parishioners — people he taught, families he knows intimately — and they are finding something he cannot give them.

Lagerlöf handles Storm with great tact. She does not make him foolish; she makes him limited. His authority is real. It simply does not extend to this. The chapter closes with the movement established in the parish despite him, and with Storm unable to decide what to do about it.