t
abstractedly over the harbour.

The result of his reflections was that he gave up his idea of plying to
Holland.

He took a boat to Sandvigen, but while they were on the way, he suddenly
made the boatman change his course, and put in to the slip on the other
side of the harbour. He must talk to Elizabeth's aunt. There was
something in his mind all the time that wouldn't let him altogether
believe the worst.

When he went in to the old woman, she recognised him at once.

"How do you do, Salve?" she said, quite calmly. "You have been a long
while away--half a century almost."

She offered him a chair, but he remained standing, and asked abruptly--

"Is it true that Elizabeth--left Beck's like that--and went to Holland?"

"How do you mean like that?" she asked, sharply, while her face flushed
slightly.

"As people say," replied Salve, with bitter emphasis.

"When people say it, a fool like you of course must believe it," she
rejoined, derisively. "I don't understand why you want to come here to
her old aunt for information when it seems you have so many other
confidants about the town. But anyhow, she can tell you something
different from them, my lad; and she wouldn't do it, if it wasn't that
she knew the girl still loved you in spite of all the years you have
been away, gadding about, God knows where, in the world. It's true
enough she left Beck's one night and came here in the morning; but it
was just for your sake, and no one else's, that she might get quit of
the lieutenant. It was Madam Beck herself that got her a place in
Holland, because she didn't want to have her for a daughter-in-law."

A wild gleam of joy broke over Salve's features for a moment, but they
relapsed almost immediately into gloom.

"Was she not engaged to Carl Beck, then?" he asked.

"Yes and no," replied the old woman, cautiously, not wishing to depart a
hair's-breadth from the truth. "She allowed herself to be betrayed into
saying 'yes,' but fled from the house because she didn't want to have
him. She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she repented having said
'no' to you."

"So that was the way of it," he rejoined sarcastically. "The 'yes' and
'no' meant that the Becks wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, and
bundled her out of the house over to Holland; and you want me to believe
it was for my sake she went. God knows," he added, sadly, and shaking
his head slowly, "I would willingly believe it--more willingly than I