Jesus!" shrieked Klaus, clinging to the stempost. "She'll kill
him! She'll kill him!"

Peer was half up now, on his knees, but as he reached out a hand to
grasp the side, the brute's jaws seized on his arm. The boy's face
was contorted with pain--another moment and the sharp teeth would have
bitten through, when, swift as thought, Peter Ronningen dropped his
oars and sent his knife straight in between the beast's eyes. The blade
pierced through to the brain, and the grip of the teeth relaxed.

"C-c-cursed d-d-devil!" stammered Peter, as he scrambled back to
his oars. Another moment, and Peer had dragged himself clear and was
kneeling by the forward thwart, holding the ragged sleeve of his wounded
arm, while the blood trickled through his fingers.

When at last they were pulling homeward, the little boat overloaded with
the weight of the great carcase, all at once they stopped rowing.

"Where is Klaus?" asked Peer--for the doctor's son was gone from where
he had sat, clinging to the stem.

"Why--there he is--in the bottom!"

There lay the big lout of fifteen, who already boasted of his
love-affairs, learned German, and was to be a gentleman like his
father--there he lay on the bottom-boards in the bow in a dead faint.

The others were frightened at first, but Peer, who was sitting washing
his wounded arm, took a dipper full of water and flung it in the
unconscious one's face. The next instant Klaus had started up sitting,
caught wildly at the gunwale, and shrieked out:

"Cut the line, and row for your lives!"

A roar of laughter went up from the rest; they dropped their oars and
sat doubled up and gasping. But on the beach, before going home,
they agreed to say nothing about Klaus's fainting fit. And for weeks
afterwards the four scamps' exploit was the talk of the village, so that
they felt there was not much fear of their getting the thrashing they
deserved when the men came home.

Chapter II

When Peer, as quite a little fellow, had been sent to live with the old
couple at Troen, he had already passed several times from one adopted
home to another, though this he did not remember. He was one of the
madcaps of the village now, but it was not long since he had been a
solitary child, moping apart from the rest. Why did people always say
"Poor child!" whenever they were speaking about his real mother? Why did
they do it? Why, even Peter Ronningen, when he was angry, would stammer
out: "You ba-ba-bastard