Q.The crofter showed the peddler his thirty kronor. How did the peddler repay this trust, and how did the world then close in on him like a rattrap?
The peddler betrayed the trusting crofter by returning to steal the thirty kronor, then lost himself in a confusing forest — realising he had been trapped by the bait of the money, exactly as he had imagined the world's rattrap works.
The crofter had trusted the peddler completely. Lonely and open-hearted, he not only gave his guest shelter, supper and tobacco, but even took down the leather pouch hanging on the window frame and showed him three wrinkled ten-kronor bills — the thirty kronor his cow's milk had earned. The peddler repaid this trust with cold theft. The next morning both men rose early and left the cottage at the same time, the crofter locking the door behind them. But only half an hour later the peddler stood again before the house. He did not try to get in; he simply went to the window, smashed a pane, stuck in his hand, and lifted out the pouch. He pocketed the money and, coolly, hung the empty pouch very carefully back in its place before going away.
Then the world closed in on him exactly as he had once amused himself by imagining a rattrap does. Not daring to stay on the public highway, he turned off into the woods; but it was a big and confusing forest. The paths twisted back and forth, and though he tried to keep a definite direction, he walked and walked only to find he had been circling the same part of the wood. All at once he recalled his own thoughts about the world and the rattrap: "Now his own turn had come. He had let himself be fooled by a bait and had been caught." The whole forest, with its trunks, thickets and fallen logs, "closed in upon him like an impenetrable prison from which he could never escape." As darkness descended over the late-December forest, his gloom and despair deepened until, tired to death, he sank down thinking his last moment had come — the money that had tempted him now the very bait that had snapped the trap shut.
The peddler repaid the crofter's trust by returning half an hour after both men had left, smashing a windowpane and stealing the thirty kronor in broad daylight, then carefully rehanging the empty pouch. The world then closed in on him like a rattrap in the forest: avoiding the highway, he lost his way, walked in circles, and realised he himself had been lured by the bait of the money and caught — the forest shutting round him "like an impenetrable prison from which he could never escape."
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