mother and sister and brothers cried bitterly at the loss of the
beautiful _Femboering_; but Jack stood on the roof of the boat-house and
laughed fit to split.

And towards autumn the news spread that the Bailiff with his eight men
had gone down with the _Femboering_ in the West-fjord.

But in those days there was quite a changing about of boats all over
Nordland, and Jack was unable to build a tenth part of the boats
required of him. Folks from near and far hung about the walls of his
boat-house, and it was quite a favour on his part to take orders, and
agree to carry them out. A whole score of boats soon stood beneath the
pent-house on the strand.

He no longer troubled his head about every _seventh_ boat, or cared to
know which it was or what befell it. If a boat foundered now and then,
so many the more got off and did well, so that, on the whole, he made a
very good thing indeed out of it. Besides, surely folks could pick and
choose their own boats, and take which they liked best.

But Jack got so great and mighty that it was not advisable for any one
to thwart him, or interfere where he ruled and reigned.

Whole rows of silver dollars stood in the barrels in the loft, and his
boat-building establishment stretched over all the islands of Sjoeholm.

One Sunday his brothers and merry little Malfri had gone to church in
the _Femboering_. When evening came, and they hadn't come home, the
boatman came in and said that some one had better sail out and look
after them, as a gale was blowing up.

Jack was sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurements
of a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of the
others, so that it was not well to disturb him.

"Do you fancy they're gone out in a rotten old tub, then?" bellowed he.
And the boatman was driven out as quickly as he had come.

But at night Jack lay awake and listened. The wind whined outside and
shook the walls, and there were cries from the sea far away. And just
then there came a knocking at the door, and some one called him by name.

"Go back whence you came," cried he, and nestled more snugly in his bed.

Shortly afterwards there came the fumbling and the scratching of tiny
fingers at the door.

"Can't you leave me at peace o' nights?" he bawled, "or must I build me
another bedroom?"

But the knocking and the fumbling for the latch outside continued, and
there was a sweeping sound at the door, as of some one who could not