they meddled
with them.

Sivert Jespersen, too, had been a peasant lad who had worked himself
up from nothing. He now owned two large warehouses in the town and
several salting-houses in the north. Moreover, he had several shares
in sundry vessels.

He no longer went to the fishing himself, as he was over sixty, much
bent, and very rheumatic, like most of those who had frequented the
winter fishing in their youth.

But when the herring came in, he strolled up to the warehouse in his
old-fashioned coat and fur cap, and on such occasions he was radiant
with good humour. The whole building is full of people, herrings,
salt, and barrels; noise and shouting, the sound of coopering and of
hoisting and lowering by ropes.

The floors and steps are wet and slippery with brine and with the
blood of herrings dripping down from one floor to another. Fish
scales cover the walls, and everywhere there is a smell as if one
were in the belly of a whale.

Amidst all this, Sivert Gesvint moves about with a tallow candle in
his hand, up and down and round about the whole house, humming a
psalm tune as he goes.

There is some disturbance among the fish-girls; they are either
quarrelling or playing some practical joke, but so roughly that two
barrels packed with herrings are upset, and the contents scattered on
the floor and into the salt tubs, making a sad mess.

"Come, come," says Sivert Jespersen, approaching them, his voice mild
and soft as usual; "you must treat the gifts of God with care, so
that they may not be injured or wasted. Is it not so, dear children?"

He looks from one to the other with his cold grey eye and fixed
smile, while the girls silently busy themselves in gathering up and
repacking the fish.

It was always considered much more disagreeable to be called "dear
children" by Sivert Jespersen than to be called "young devils" by any
one else.

Although in their quiet way they throve, and seemed to conduct their
affairs with much prudence and discretion, the business affairs of
these Haugians rested upon anything but a solid foundation. Two years
of failure in the fishing, or a disastrous fire in their uninsured
property, and many apparently large fortunes would melt away almost
to nothing.

They felt this themselves sometimes, when the herring were late in
coming, or when, in the spring time, they found the till empty and
the barrels of herrings unsold, and when everything depended upon the
rise or fall o