Robert’s flight from service at Nybacken

Robert’s flight from service at Nybacken is both a refusal of an abusive master and a test of how far family loyalty can resist the servant law. After years of service seem to stretch endlessly before him, he leaves Aron’s farm when Aron’s punishment for an accident becomes intolerable. Karl Oskar’s defense gives the escape a new dimension: Robert is no longer facing the system alone, but neither his brother’s intervention nor the family home can protect him from the law’s claim on a farmhand.

Service and the decision to leave

Robert’s service under Aron was marked by a sharp imbalance between obedience and trust. Though he had been attentive and had done what was asked of him, Aron had disciplined him once that summer for responding too slowly to an order to fetch water. Robert’s work also wore on him: while cleaning a deep ditch near the house, he grew hungry, thirsty, and dispirited, and imagined the years ahead as an unending succession of farmhand service. The task did not itself cause his departure, but it reveals the hopelessness that made continued service feel like a life sentence.

The immediate break came after Robert was bringing home a wagonload of rutabagas. At a narrow gate, a turn in the road and a mare that did not respond promptly led the wagon to strike a gatepost and break its shaft. Robert said he had held the reins as firmly as he could. Aron answered the accident with violence, leaving Robert’s back injured, and Robert also described an earlier blow to his ear that had left it ringing. The next morning he left Nybacken without permission, deciding that he would not return.

Return to Korpamoen and family defense

When Robert reached Korpamoen, he showed his injured back to his family rather than concealing what had happened. Märta recognized that he had been beaten, and Robert explained the accident and Aron’s response. Karl Oskar inspected his brother’s injuries and told him he need not go back: no one in their family had to accept such treatment. The declaration rejected the master’s authority in the language of family dignity, while Robert’s return transformed an escape from service into a matter Karl Oskar felt bound to address.

Their father was lame and unable to defend his younger son, so Karl Oskar took responsibility for confronting Aron. At Nybacken, he challenged the farmer over beating a fifteen-year-old and refused to accept the description of the punishment as a minor correction. He then threatened Aron directly, warning that no one in his family would again be available for him to flog. The encounter ended with Aron frightened and Karl Oskar returning home. It also changed the brothers’ relationship: Robert, who had been somewhat afraid of his elder brother and had rarely been close to him, felt newly connected to him after Karl Oskar took his side.

The law’s claim and the search

The family’s defense did not settle Robert’s status. He remained at Korpamoen as a deserter, and Karl Oskar warned him to be ready to hide if visitors arrived. When the sheriff came, he said Aron had sought the authorities’ help in returning Robert to service. The legal argument treated Aron’s punishment as a master’s right under the servant law and Robert’s departure as a separate offense; in that view, the boy’s grievance did not cancel his obligation to serve.

Karl Oskar refused to help apprehend his brother and asked to see the document that made him legally responsible for doing so. The sheriff recognized that Karl Oskar knew his rights, but maintained that enforcing the servant law was his duty. He and his assistant searched the house and outbuildings, including the attic, barns, hayloft, cellar, and woodshed, while the family endured the intrusion. Robert was not found. The sheriff left warning that he would catch him if he remained in the district, making clear that the failed search had postponed rather than ended the pursuit.

Flight beyond the district

Robert had spent the evening hiding in a neighbor’s field and in Jonas Petter’s meadow barn. He returned to Korpamoen near midnight, cold after the hours outdoors, and Karl Oskar warmed milk for him by the hearth. Reading the sheriff’s warning as a threat confined to his district, Karl Oskar concluded that Robert could not safely stay at home. Kristina suggested another refuge: her parents’ home in Duvemåla, in the parish of Algutsboda, beyond the sheriff’s jurisdiction. They needed a worker and, unlike Aron, were considerate toward their help.

Robert agreed to leave early the next morning. The plan offered him temporary safety and a chance to wait for another opening, not a final resolution of his fugitive status. His departure also gives the episode its defining contrast: the law can pursue him across the family threshold, but the family can still help him find a place beyond the sheriff’s reach. As Robert and Karl Oskar sit together by the fire, their closeness has been newly established through a concrete act of protection, even as the conditions that forced Robert to flee remain in place.