caped his son, however; while his
mother looked at him in some anxiety lest he should be going to sit
there and make a fool of himself. "Well, and what further did he tell
him?"

"Oh, lots of things."

"Let us have them."

"He said they had had such a hurricane down there, that they came across
a whole town that had been blown away drifting out in the middle of the
sea, with a minister praying in the midst of it;--then, that they had
run so close in to the land in beating up the Straits of Gibraltar, that
they had taken a palm-tree on board on the end of the bowsprit with a
whole family of negroes sitting in it, whom they had afterwards to put
ashore."

Gjert would have delivered himself of still another curious incident if
he had not been brought up by the laughter of his parents. The "bagman"
too, was laughing, because he saw the others doing so, and received a
crushing look accordingly from Gjert, who drew in his horns at once.

"Perhaps you don't think it's true?"

"Do you know what it is to spin a yarn, my boy? That lad down in the gig
has been spinning you a fine one," said his father, as he sat down to
the table.

Gjert continued to talk all through the meal, and when it was over,
while his mother came in and out of the room, and his father sat over at
the window, partly listening and partly looking out at the weather. He
described everything he had seen with such life and vividness,
particularly all that concerned the officers and the cadets, that his
mother sat down to listen, and his father, when there was a moment's
pause, observed with a quiet laugh--

"I daresay you would have liked to have been one of the cadets yourself,
Gjert?"

"Yes," said his mother, beguiled for a moment by the dazzling thought.
"If he were only to go to school in Arendal no one knows what might
happen. The clerk says that nothing is any trouble to Gjert."

Something in this observation must have struck discordantly upon her
husband's ear, for he changed colour and replied shortly after, somewhat
sarcastically--

"It's my opinion that Gjert is not too good for his father's station,
and that we are not going to make interest with anybody to hoist him up
into the company of his betters, as they call themselves."

Gjert's previous animation had been very much heightened by the picture
which such a glittering prospect presented to his fancy, and he cried
now, without taking warning by his father's changed tone--

"Mother