ister came into the room
smiling one day then, and said--

"Elizabeth, there is a young sailor out in the porch who wants to speak
to you; he has a parcel under his arm. Perhaps it is a present."

Elizabeth, who was bringing in the tea-things at the time, turned red,
and Carl Beck, who was standing by the window, a little pale. She knew
very well that it was Salve, and for a moment she was almost frightened
at his audacity. She had seen him a couple of times before, and had
allowed him to feel that she was not particularly anxious for his
company, in consequence of what her aunt had told her, and as she went
out to see him now she trembled.

He looked at her for a moment or two without saying a word.

"Will you take this dress, Elizabeth?" he said at last, almost harshly.

"No, that I won't, Salve. Such things as you have been saying about me!"

"So you won't take it?" he said, slowly and dejectedly. "It is no use
saying anything more, then, I suppose."

"No, Salve, it is no use saying anything more."

The desolate expression of his face as he stood and looked at her, while
he asked, "Am I to take it to sea with me, Elizabeth?" went to her
heart, and the tears rushed into her eyes. She shook her head
negatively, but with an almost despairing look, and disappeared into the
house.

They could see in the sitting-room that she had been crying. But Carl
Beck was a cold-blooded man, and merely lay at the window and looked out
after his rival, to see if he had the parcel under his arm as he went
out of the gate.

That night Elizabeth lay awake. She had cried in her sleep, and had
dreamed that she had seen Salve standing down at the quay so wretchedly
clothed and so miserable, but too proud to ask assistance of any one,
and that he had given her such a bitterly reproachful look; and she lay
tossing about, unable to get the dream out of her head. Presently there
came the noise of a riotous mob outside, and she got up and went to the
window. The police were taking some one with them down the street. As
they passed, she saw by the light of the street-lamp for a moment that
it was Salve. He was resisting with all his might, pale and infuriated,
with his blue shirt all torn open in the front, and there was an
expression in his face that--at any rate, she slept no more that night.

There had been a general _melee_, she heard next morning, among the
sailors over in Mother Andersen's, on the other side of the harbour. It
w