cely a glance over to where his father and mother were sitting
on the bench together looking very happy, he turned at once to the
hearth and became aware of the sad fact that there was positively no
porridge to be seen; there was not even a fire. Coming bodily into the
room, he asked, with tears in his voice--

"Have you had dinner? Are Gjert and I not to have any, then?"

His mother sprang up. "And aunt!" she exclaimed. "I declare it is
half-past one, and no dinner put down!" Henrik was glad to find that the
worst danger was over.

Mother Kirstine had conjectured that there must be something particular
going on between the pair in the kitchen, and that was the reason she
had not called Elizabeth. When the latter now came in, she looked at her
inquiringly, and asked if anything had happened.

"The happiest thing of my whole life, aunt," said Elizabeth, coming over
to the bed and embracing her impetuously. She hurried back then to her
business in the kitchen.

The old woman looked after her, and nodded her head a couple of times
slowly, thoughtfully. "No--so?"

"He is joking with little Henrik," she said then to herself. "That is
wonderful: I have never heard him laugh before."

When they went to dinner in the kitchen Salve left them--he was not
hungry--and came in to her. He had a great deal to say, and was a long
while away.

CHAPTER XXXII.

It was an afternoon in the following winter in the pilot's home. His
wife was expecting him, and kept looking uneasily out of the window. He
was to have been home by noon, and it was now beginning to get dark; and
the weather had been stormy the whole of the previous day.

She gave up sewing, and sat thinking in the twilight, with the light
playing over the floor from the door of the stove, where a little kettle
was boiling, that she might have something warm ready for him at once
when he came. It was too early to light a candle.

Gjert was at school in Arendal, living at his aunt's; and Henrik was
sitting by the light from the stove, cutting up a piece of wood into
shavings.

"It is beginning to blow again, Henrik," she said, and put a
handkerchief round her head to look out.

"It is no use, mother," he pronounced, without stirring, and splitting a
long peg into two against his chest; "it's pitch-dark, isn't it?" So she
gave it up again before she got to the door, but stood and listened; she
thought she had heard a shout outside.

"He is coming!" she crie