door.

"About Elizabeth, you say?"

"Yes--where is she stopping now?"

"Where is she stopping?--why, with the Becks, of course. Is there
anything the matter?"

"You ought to know that best, mother Kirstine," he said, earnestly.

She held up the light to his face, and looked at him in vague anxiety,
but could make nothing out of it.

"If I ought to know it, tell me," she said, almost in a tone of
entreaty.

"Young Beck, I hear, has been out about Torungen the whole
year--shooting sea-birds--or--do you really think he means to marry
her?" he broke out wildly, and raising his voice.

It was only now that she caught his full meaning; and setting down the
candlestick hard upon the table, she dropped into the chair by the side
herself.

"So--that is what they are saying, is it?" she cried at last. Her first
fear was over; but anger had succeeded to it, and she rose now from her
seat with arms akimbo and flashing eyes. She was not a woman to offend
lightly.

"So they have fastened that lie upon Elizabeth, have they!--it's a shame
for them, so it is! And you, Salve, can soil your lips with it? Let me
just tell you, then, for your pains, that the Becks' house is as
respectable a one as any in Arendal; and it isn't you, and such as you,
that can take its character away. Never fear but Elizabeth shall hear
every word of your precious story--ay, and the captain, and the
lieutenant, and Madam Beck, too; and you'll be hunted from the Juno like
a dripping cur. So you thought that Elizabeth was to be beholden to the
lieutenant for a character--?"

"Dear mother Kirstine!" Salve cried, interrupting her in the full
torrent of her indignation, "I didn't think about it--I couldn't think.
Only, I heard Anders of the Crag down on the slip this morning say it
all so confidently.

"Anders of the Crag? So it was from him you heard it?--the pitiful,
wheedling rascal! That is his gratitude, I suppose, for my being with
his wife last week!--I shall know where to find him. But the receiver in
the like is no better than the stealer," she resumed, indignantly; "and
I'd have you know, it was just Beck's own daughter who came here and
offered Elizabeth a respectable place in a respectable house, and it was
to me she talked, my lad," pointing self-consciously with quivering
forefinger at her own bosom; "so Elizabeth has not begged herself in
there at all. You didn't need to desert your watch to bring such tales
here; and Elizabeth shall