better than you treat me; and I will tell you plainly why. I
repent of my feelings towards my fellow-servant, now that evil has
befallen him--"

"What? O what?" cried Erica.

"He was seen fishing on the fiord, in that poor little worn-out skiff.
I myself saw him. And when I looked next for the skiff, it was gone,--
it had disappeared."

"And where were you?"

"Never mind where I was. I was not with him, but about my own business.
And I tell you, I no more laid a finger on him or his skiff than any
one of you."

"Where was it?"

"Close by Vogel islet!"

Erica started, and, in one moment's flush of hope, told that Rolf had
said, he should be safe at any time near Vogel islet. Hund caught at
her words so eagerly as to make a favourable impression on all, who saw,
what was indeed the truth, that he would have been glad to know that
Rolf was alive. Their manner so changed towards Hund, that if Stiorna
had been there, she would have triumphed. But the more they considered
the case, the more improbable it seemed that Rolf should have escaped
drowning.

"Mother, what do you think?" whispered the gentle Orga.

"I think, my dear, that we shall never forgive ourselves for letting
Rolf go out in that old skiff."

"Then you think,--you feel quite sure,--mother, that Nipen had nothing
to do with it."

"I feel confident, my dear, that there is no such being as Nipen."

"Even after all that has happened?--after this, following upon Oddo's
prank that night?"

"Even so, Orga. We suffer by our own carelessness and folly, my love:
and it makes us neither wiser nor better to charge the consequence upon
evil spirits;--to charge our good God with permitting revengeful beings
to torment us, instead of learning from his chastisements to sin in the
same way no more."

"But, mother, if you are right, how very far wrong all these others
are!"

"It is but little, my child, that the wisest of us knows: but there is a
whole eternity before us, every one, to grow wise in. Some," and she
looked towards Oddo, "may outgrow their mistakes here; and others,"
looking at old Peder, "are travelling fast towards a place where
everybody is wiser than years or education can make us here. Your
father and I do wish, for Frolich and you, that you should rest your
reverence, your hopes and fears, on none but the good God. Do we not
know that not even a sparrow falleth to the ground without his will?"

"Poor Erica would be less mise