t out as bravely as she could, she removed
her head-dress, dropped her hair out of the plaits, until it fell in
its sunny wavelets to her waist, and asked how much he would give for
it. The Jew answered, "Fifty kroner."

"Make it sixty," she said, "and it is yours."

The Jew protested that he would lose by the transaction, but he paid
the money into Rachel's hands, and she, lest she should repent of her
bargain, prayed him to take her hair off instantly. He was nothing
loth to do so, and the beautiful flaxen locks, cut close to the
crown, fell in long tresses to his big shears. Rachel put back her
linen head-dress, and, holding tightly the sixty silver pieces in
her palm, hurried home.

Her cheeks were crimson, her eyes were wet, and her heart was beating
high when she returned to her poor home in the fishing quarter. There
in a shrill, tremulous voice of joy and fear, she told Stephen all,
and counted out the glistening coins to the last of the sixty into
his great hand.

"And now you can buy the English boat," she said, "and we shall be
beholden to no one."

He answered her wild words with few of his own, and showed little
pleasure; yet he closed his hand on the money, and, getting up, he
went out of the house, saying he must see the Scotch captain there
and then. Hardly had he gone when the old mother came in from her
work on the beach, and, Rachel's hopes being high, she could not but
share them with her, and so she told her all, little as was the
commerce that passed between them. The mother only grunted as she
listened and went on with her food.

Rachel longed for Stephen to return with the good news that all was
settled and done, but the minutes passed and he did not come. The old
woman sat by the hearth and smoked. Rachel waited with fear at her
heart, but the hours went by and still Stephen did not appear. The
old woman dozed before the fire and snored. At length, when the night
had worn on towards midnight, an unsteady step came to the door, and
Stephen reeled into the house drunk. The old woman awoke and laughed.

Rachel grew faint and sank to a seat. Stephen dropped to his knees on
the ground before her, and in a maudling cry went on to tell of how
he had thought to make one hundred kroner of her sixty by a wager,
how he had lost fifty, and then in a fit of despair had spent the
other ten.

"Then all is gone--all," cried Rachel. And thereupon the old woman
shuffled to her feet and said bitterly, "