had said, it was
understood that he had disappeared long ago. What was to be done with
the boy?

Never till now had Peer rightly understood that he was a stranger here,
for all that he called the old couple father and mother.

He lay awake night after night up in the loft, listening to the talk
about him going on in the room below--the good-wife crying and saying:
"No, no!", the others saying how hard the times were, and that Peer
was quite old enough now to be put to service as a goat-herd on some
up-country farm.

Then Peer would draw the skin-rug up over his head. But often, when one
of the elders chanced to be awake at night, he could hear some one in
the loft sobbing in his sleep. In the daytime he took up as little room
as he could at the table, and ate as little as humanly possible; but
every morning he woke up in fear that to-day--to-day he would have to
bid the old foster-mother farewell and go out among strangers.

Then something new and unheard of plumped down into the little cottage
by the fjord.

There came a registered letter with great dabs of sealing-wax all over
it, and a handwriting so gentlemanly as to be almost unreadable. Every
one crowded round the eldest son to see it opened--and out fell five
ten-crown notes. "Mercy on us!" they cried in amazement, and "Can it
be for us?" The next thing was to puzzle out what was written in the
letter. And who should that turn out to be from but--no other than
Peer's father, though he did not say it in so many words. "Be good to
the boy," the letter said. "You will receive fifty crowns from me every
half-year. See that he gets plenty to eat and goes dry and well shod.
Faithfully your, P. Holm, Captain."

"Why, Peer--he's--he's--Your father's a captain, an officer," stammered
the eldest girl, and fell back a step to stare at the boy.

"And we're to get twice as much for him as before," said the son,
holding the notes fast and gazing up at the ceiling, as if he were
informing Heaven of the fact.

But the old wife was thinking of something else as she folded her hands
in thankfulness--now she needn't lose the boy.

"Properly fed!" No need to fear for that. Peer had treacle with his
porridge that very day, though it was only a week-day. And the eldest
son gave him a pair of stockings, and made him sit down and put them on
then and there; and the same night, when he went to bed, the eldest girl
came and tucked him up in a new skin-rug, not quite so hairles