744 THE DRAMA 



has ever claimed him. In the home of his youth and at school he was 

 a stranger. A hideous act of covetous heartlessness, of which he was 

 an unsuspected witness, completely alienated him from his mother 

 when he was yet a child. The grandeur and heroism of his character 

 had been untempered hitherto by the personal tenderness the whole 

 wealth of which he now pours out for his wife and child. But Agnes 

 complains that to others his love is still hard, and that in the terrible 

 sternness of his demand, "all or nothing," he repels instead of win- 

 ning. His old mother yearns with a superstitious longing to receive 

 the sacrament and the assurance of forgiveness from him on her 

 deathbed. He lays down the condition that before she dies she shall 

 give away the whole of that wealth for which she has sinned, and 

 toiled, and pinched, and lived a loveless and sunless life, and shall go 

 naked into her grave. In vain she pleads that he is bidding her 

 scatter her very soul to the winds. He is inexorable. In the anguish 

 of a deathbed repentance she sends messengers to him. She offers 

 half her wealth, at last nine-tenths of it; but is only met with the 

 old answer, "everything or nothing," and dies muttering, "God is not 

 so hard as my son," comforted, so says the almost broken-hearted 

 Brand, by the old lie, looking upon God, as all the rest do, as a good- 

 natured huckster that may be beaten down if he cannot get his full 

 price. And yet this man, now that his love is awakened, is visited in 

 spite of himself by seasons of compunction if not of doubt. To stand 

 before men with his awful "everything or nothing," draws tears of 

 blood from his heart. In loneliness he bites the tongue. with which 

 he has chastised, and when he lifts his arm to strike, the passionate 

 longing comes over him to embrace the weak and sinful brother. 



Then comes his own trial. He and Agnes both notice, though 

 neither will confess it, the pale cheek and waning strength of their 

 boy. Surely, says Brand, God cannot take him from them. Yet what 

 if he can? May not God do to-day what "the terror of Isaac" did 

 long ago? Then comes the doctor's verdict. It is certain death to 

 the child to stay another month on the sunless fiord, and Brand in an 

 agony of apprehension orders immediate preparations to be made for 

 leaving their home that very hour. 



Then one after another, from the mouth of the doctor himself, from 

 the parishioner who has heard a report that he means to leave them 

 on receiving his inheritance from his mother, from the poor mad 

 girl, Gerd, who is so strangely connected with his fate, from every 

 Bide come echoes of his own teaching, "all or nothing." He has given 

 up his ambition, he has given up his life to his work in his remote 

 parish, he has refused to yield or to depart, has nailed his flag to the 

 mast and declared that here he will stand or fall in conflict with 

 his foe. He has given much for his work on the fiord. Yet it is 

 nothing if he will not give all. Now he realizes what he has been de- 



