Treated like a captain

The next day is Christmas Eve. The peddler comes down to breakfast washed, his hair cut, his beard shaved, and dressed in a good suit the ironmaster has lent him. In the daylight, the ironmaster sees at once that this is not his old friend Captain von Stahle. He threatens to call the sheriff.

The peddler answers calmly that he never pretended to be anyone else. He had not wanted to come; he is willing to put on his rags again and leave. And then he repeats his idea: the whole world is a rattrap, and the ironmaster too, who thinks himself so safe, may one day be caught in it.

The ironmaster tells him to leave at once. But Edla stops her father. She thinks of how the man walks about the whole year long, with no home, welcome nowhere, afraid of being arrested. She wants him to enjoy one day of peace with them. 'We promised him Christmas cheer,' she says. So the stranger stays.

He sleeps almost all day, safe for once. In the evening he joins them at the Christmas table, and Edla tells him he may keep the suit as a Christmas present, and that he is welcome to come back next Christmas.

On Christmas morning, while the family is at church, the peddler leaves. Edla is anxious: has he stolen anything? But at church the ironmaster hears that the old crofter has been robbed by a peddler, and they hurry home. There they find a little package on the table: a rattrap, and in it the old crofter's thirty kronor, with a letter.

The letter asks Edla to return the money to the old man. It says that since she had been so nice to him all day long, as if he was a captain, he wanted to be nice to her in return, as if he were a real captain. He had been caught in the world's rattrap, but she had set him free. He signs it 'Captain von Stahle'.