Chapter 5 — Erik comes

Time passes at Lönborggaard. Edele has been buried; Niels is older; the household has folded the loss into its life in the manner of households. Bigum still teaches. Niels still reads. Frithjof, the pastor's son, has begun to drift toward his own future. The house is as quiet as country houses are when nothing in particular is happening, and the chapter opens in that quiet.

Into it arrives Erik Refstrup. He is the son of a cousin of Lyhne's — a young man a few years older than Niels, whose family has decided he should spend a stretch of months in the country before settling into his life. He is to be a sculptor. He has trained a little in Copenhagen and is to train more. He is broad-shouldered, easy with strangers, easy with his own body, easy with girls; he laughs out loud at things Niels would think about silently for a week. The novel does not over-praise him. It registers, plainly, the temperament Niels has not been given.

The two become friends. Erik, who has the social gift, draws Niels out; Niels, who has the inward gift, gives Erik something to listen to in the long evenings when there is nothing else to do at Lönborggaard. They walk on the heath. They argue about books. They make plans for Copenhagen, where each of them will go, in his own time, to study what he is going to study. The friendship is the chapter's gift to Niels and, unknown to him, the long fuse the novel is laying. The chapter ends with Erik's departure and the promise — more vivid in Niels's mind than in his — that they will meet again in the city.