Book Two — The Wild Hunt

Elof Ersson has died leaving Karin and Ingmar penniless — deliberately, out of spite. Many think Elof should find no peace in his grave for the way he treated them. Ingmar, who wanted to become a teacher, moves back to Storm's household as a student, borrowing books from the village while he works out his next step. Karin stays on the mortgaged farm, trying to manage the debt.

At the schoolmaster's, Ingmar and Gertrude fall into their old pattern — he helps her with lessons, minds her "like a slave," endures her condescension with complete patience. Gertrude has always treated him as slightly beneath her; now that he is genuinely poor, she weeps for him. She had dreamed, without quite knowing it, of what he would someday be. The poverty has not changed her feeling; it has clarified it.

Karin, through this period, is being drawn toward the community gathering around Storm's mission house. A lay preacher named Dagson is speaking there, and Karin goes hoping to understand why God has punished her through Elof. The answer she finds is not comfort; it is a new direction entirely. The Hellgum movement is beginning to claim her.