ot done something? There was nothing to stop you,
nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack ambition?
Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter? What was the
matter?"

He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and
followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless
and dismayed. He waited a moment, as though seeking where to begin, and
then said:

"Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If
you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there
was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no
deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched, and
because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns,
and the thorns sprung up and choked them."

"Well?" I said.

"Well?" he queried, half petulantly. "It was not well. I was one of
those seeds."

He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying. I finished my
work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to me.

"Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you will
see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord. I was born within a hundred
miles of that stretch of water. But I was not born Norwegian. I am a
Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that
bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know. I never heard.
Outside of that there is nothing mysterious. They were poor people and
unlettered. They came of generations of poor unlettered people--peasants
of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom
since time began. There is no more to tell."

"But there is," I objected. "It is still obscure to me."

"What can I tell you?" he demanded, with a recrudescence of fierceness.
"Of the meagreness of a child's life? of fish diet and coarse living? of
going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who
went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of
myself, unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on
the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage,
where kicks and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of
speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul-experiences? I do
not care to remember. A madness comes up in my brain even now as I think
of it. But there were coastwise skippers I would have returned and
kille