sailor would think twice
before sitting down beside him, unless it came natural to him to do so
from the way in which they had greeted or spoken to one other.

It was not, however, any attraction which he found in Mother Andersen's
parlour which made him spend so much of his time there; it was that he
was afraid of his own temper at home.

When he had first set up on his own account, and had had his appointment
as a duly certificated pilot for the object of his ambition, he had
never made it his habit to stay in Arendal when he returned from sea
instead of going home. But some two or three years after he had settled
out at Merdoe, a couple of incidents had occurred which made a new
starting-point, as it were, in his domestic life. They were the
nomination of Captain Beck, who was now a wealthy man, to the post of
master of the pilots of the district, and who, as such, became his
superior; and the arrival of Carl Beck to live in Arendal and
superintend his father's shipbuilding yard, for which purpose he had
retired from the navy. Since the arrival of the Becks he had become more
and more difficult to get on with; and Elizabeth's secret, self-denying
struggle grew proportionately harder. Whenever she returned from a
shopping expedition to Arendal, or from seeing her aunt, she would be
sure to find him in an irritable humour, which would generally vent
itself in contemptuous remarks upon old Beck's incapacity for the post
he held; and at last, much as she longed to get a glimpse now and then
of something different from the monotony of her daily life out on Merdoe,
she gave up going altogether.

Her patience and self-suppression had had the effect, as years went on,
of making a tyrant of her husband. When in one of his dark moods now, he
would not tolerate the slightest contradiction from her or from any one
in the house, and all she could do was to be quietly cheerful and
affectionate, and to try her best to avoid falling into any of the traps
which he would lay to catch her, and to make her, by some chance word or
other, or even by a slightly displeased or resigned expression, give his
bad humour an excuse for breaking out. She had to weigh every word she
uttered, and to take the most roundabout methods of avoiding his
sensitiveness, and after all, she would perhaps commit herself when she
least expected it; upon which a scene would immediately ensue, that
would be all the more unpleasant from his never expressing him