ical works,
forbade his family to go to church, and had been visited by Bjornson
himself. It was good to have him on your side; to have him against you
was fatal--you might just as well clear out of the town altogether. He
had a finger in everything that went on; it was as if he owned the whole
town. He had been known to meet a youth he had never spoken to before in
the street and accost him with a peremptory "Understand me, young man;
you will marry that girl." Yet for all this, Lorentz Uthoug was not
altogether content. True, he was head and shoulders above all the
Ringeby folks, but what he really wanted was to be the biggest man in a
place a hundred times as large.

And now that he had found a son-in-law, he seemed as it were to be
walking quietly round this stranger from the great world, taking his
measure, and asking in his thoughts: "Who are you at bottom? What have
you seen? What have you read? Are you progressive or reactionary? Have
you any proper respect for what I have accomplished here, or are you
going about laughing in your sleeve and calling me a whale among the
minnows?"

Every morning when Peer woke in his room at the hotel he rubbed his
eyes. On the table beside his bed stood a photograph of a young girl.
What? Is it really you, Peer, that have found someone to stand close to
you at last? Someone in the world who cares about you. When you have a
cold, there'll be people to come round and be anxious about you, and ask
how you are getting on. And this to happen to you!

He dined at the Uthougs' every day, and there were always flowers beside
his plate. Often there would be some little surprise--a silver spoon or
fork, or a napkin-ring with his initials on. It was like gathering
the first straws to make his new nest. And the pale woman with the
spectacles looked kindly at him, as if to say: "You are taking her from
me, but I forgive you."

One day he was sitting in the hotel, reading, when Merle came in.

"Will you come for a walk?" she asked.

"Good idea. Where shall we go to-day?"

"Well, we haven't been to see Aunt Marit at Bruseth yet. We really ought
to go, you know. I'll take you there to-day."

Peer found these ceremonial visits to his new relatives quite amusing;
he went round, as it were, collecting uncles and aunts. And to-day there
was a new one. Well, why not?

"But--my dear girl, have you been crying?" he asked suddenly, taking her
head in his hands.

"Oh, it's nothing. Come--le