d he
could eat his food, and he should do something to earn his food, and
consequently he kept Matz's red cow. He could already tend cattle and
make himself useful.

The big dog, by the yard gate of the nobleman's mansion, sits proudly
in the sunshine on the top of the kennel, and barks at every one who
goes by: if it rains he creeps into his house, and there he is warm
and dry. Ann Lisbeth's boy sat in the sunshine on the fence of the
field, and cut out a pole-pin. In the spring he knew of three
strawberry plants that were in blossom, and would certainly bear
fruit, and that was his most hopeful thought; but they came to
nothing. He sat out in the rain in foul weather, and was wet to the
skin, and afterwards the cold wind dried the clothes on his back. When
he came to the lordly farmyard he was hustled and cuffed, for the men
and maids declared he was horribly ugly; but he was used to
that--loved by nobody!

That was how it went with Anne Lisbeth's boy; and how could it go
otherwise? It was, once for all, his fate to be beloved by nobody.

Till now a "land crab," the land at last threw him overboard. He went
to sea in a wretched vessel, and sat by the helm, while the skipper
sat over the grog-can. He was dirty and ugly, half frozen and half
starved: one would have thought he had never had enough; and that
really was the case.

It was late in autumn, rough, wet, windy weather; the wind cut cold
through the thickest clothing, especially at sea; and out to sea went
a wretched boat, with only two men on board, or, properly speaking,
with only a man and a half, the skipper and his boy. It had only been
a kind of twilight all day, and now it became dark; and it was bitter
cold. The skipper drank a dram, which was to warm him from within. The
bottle was old, and the glass too; it was whole at the top, but the
foot was broken off, and therefore it stood upon a little carved block
of wood painted blue. "A dram comforts one, and two are better still,"
thought the skipper. The boy sat at the helm, which he held fast in
his hard seamed hands: he was ugly, and his hair was matted, and he
looked crippled and stunted; he was the field labourer's boy, though
in the church register he was entered as Anne Lisbeth's son.

The wind cut its way through the rigging, and the boat cut through the
sea. The sail blew out, filled by the wind, and they drove on in wild
career. It was rough and wet around and above, and it might come worse