When Märtha awakens in the morning in the wood, after the night when she lost her virginity, she is alone. The Baron has left her, and gone back to the night camp of the men on the raft. Märtha feels deceived, and runs crying to her grandmother. A group of villagers arrive to the sleeping men at the riverside. They declare that the Baron and Svensson must leave the raft, and be replaced by Elof and Nikodemus. The Baron feels humiliated, being treated like a farm-hand by the villagers, and when he walks home, he is overwhelmed by feelings of being disliked by everybody. With a new team aboard the raft, the river is soon cleansed, and the men on the raft are met with cheers by the villagers. Nikodemus has achieved a new position in the community, and this brings about a complete change in his self-esteem. He is not a hen-pecked husband anymore. When he tells his wife that her love-affair with the shop-keeper has to stop, she embraces him tenderly.
—Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se}