spectacles. "She is not really
so wild as she seems."

Uthoug himself walked up and down the room, chatting to Peer and asking
a great many questions about conditions in Egypt. He knew something
about the Mahdi, and General Gordon, and Khartoum, and the strained
relations between the Khedive and the Sultan. He was evidently a
diligent reader of the newspapers, and Peer gathered that he was a
Radical, and a man of some weight in his party. And he looked as if
there was plenty of fire smouldering under his reddish eyelids: "A bad
man to fall out with," thought Peer.

They sat down to supper, and Peer noticed that Fru Uthoug grew less pale
and anxious as her daughter laughed and joked and chattered. There even
came a slight glow at last into the faded cheeks; the eyes behind the
spectacles seemed to shine with a light borrowed from her daughter's.
But her husband seemed not to notice anything, and tried all the time to
go on talking about the Mahdi and the Khedive and the Sultan.

So for the first time for many years Peer sat down to table in a
Norwegian home--and how good it was! Would he ever have a home of his
own, he wondered.

After the meal, a mandolin was brought out, and they sat round the fire
in the great fireplace and had some music. Until at last Merle rose and
said: "Now, mother, it's time you went to bed."

"Yes, dear," came the answer submissively, and Fru Uthoug said
good-night, and Merle led her off.

Peer had risen to take leave, when Merle came in again. "Why," she said,
"you're surely not going off before you've rowed Thea home?"

"Oh, Merle, please . . ." put in the other.

But when the two had taken their places in the boat and were just about
to start up the lake, Merle came running down and said she might just as
well come too.

Half an hour later, having seen the young girl safely ashore at her
father's place, Merle and Peer were alone, rowing back through the still
night over the waters of the lake, golden in the light and dark blue in
the shadows. Merle leaned back in the stern, silent, trailing a small
branch along the surface of the water behind. After a while Peer laid in
his oars and let the boat drift.

"How beautiful it is!" he said.

The girl lifted her head and looked round. "Yes," she answered, and Peer
fancied her voice had taken a new tone.

It was past midnight. Heights and woods and saeters lay lifeless in the
soft suffused reddish light. The lake-trout were not rising