shirts, would see sleighs
come galloping down, with a jangle of bells, full of laughing, singing
young people, returning from some excursion far up in the hills, where
there had been feasting and dancing. Here a young lawyer--newly married
and something of a privileged buffoon--was sitting on the lap of
somebody else's wife, playing a concertina, and singing at the top of
his voice. "Some of that Loreng man's doings again," people would say.
"The place has never been the same since he came here." And they would
get back to bed again, shaking their heads and wondering what things
were coming to.

Peer drove out, too, on occasion, to parties at the big country houses
round, where they would play cards all night and have champagne sent
up to their rooms next morning, the hosts being men who knew how to
do things in style. This was glorious. Not mathematics or religion any
more--what he needed now was to assimilate something of the country
life of his native land. He was not going to be a stranger in his own
country. He wanted to take firm root and be able to feel, like others,
that he had a spot in the world where he was at home.

Then came the sunny day in June when he stood by Merle's bed, and she
lay there smiling faintly her one-sided smile, with a newborn girl on
her arm.

"What are we to call her, Peer?"

"Why, we settled that long ago. After your mother, of course."

"Of course her name's to be Louise," said Merle, turning the tiny red
face towards her breast.

This came as a fresh surprise. She had been planning it for weeks
perhaps, and now it took him unawares like one of her spontaneous
caresses, but this time a caress to his inmost soul.

He made a faint attempt at a joke. "Oh well, I never have any say in
my own house. I suppose you must have it your own way." He stroked her
forehead; and when she saw how deeply moved he was, she smiled up at him
with her most radiant smile.

On one of the first days of the hay-harvest, Peer lay out on a sunny
hillside with his head resting on a haycock, watching his people at
work. The mowing machine was buzzing down by the lake, the spreader at
work on the hill-slopes, the horses straining in front, the men sitting
behind driving. The whole landscape lay around him breathing summer and
fruitfulness. And he himself lay there sunk in his own restful quiet.

A woman in a light dress and a yellow straw hat came down the field
road, pushing a child's cart before her. I