s head."

"I will maintain that every where, and to all."

"What do they think came of Jan?"

"What else, but that he was pushed over the cliff-edge? A very little
push would put him in the sea, and the under-currents between here and
the Vor Ness might carry the body far from this shore. All think that
he hath been drowned."

Then Peter turned away and sat down, silent and greatly distressed. A
new and terrible suspicion had entered his mind with Snorro's words.
He was quite sure of his own innocence, but had Margaret pushed Jan
over? From her own words it was evident she had been angry and hard
with him. Was this the cause of the frantic despair he had witnessed.
It struck him then that Margaret's mother had ever been cold and
silent, and almost resentful about the matter. She had refused to talk
of it. Her whole behavior had been suspicious. He sat brooding over
the thought, sick at heart with the sin and shame it involved, until
Snorro said--"It is time to shut the door." Then he put on his cloak
and went home.

Home! How changed his home had become! It was a place of silence and
unconfessed sorrow. All its old calm restfulness had gone. Very soon
after Jan's disappearance, Thora had taken to her bed, and she had
never left it since. Peter recognized that she was dying, and this
night he missed her sorely. Her quiet love and silent sympathy had
been for many a year a tower of strength to him. But he could not
carry this trouble to her, still less did he care to say any thing to
Margaret. For the first time he was sensible of a feeling of
irritation in her presence. Her white despairing face angered him. For
all this trouble, in one way or another, she was responsible.

He felt, too, that full of anxiety as he was, she was hardly listening
to a word he said. Her ears were strained to catch the first movement
of her child, who was sleeping in the next room. To every one he had
suddenly become of small importance. Both at home and abroad he felt
this. To such bitter reflections he smoked his pipe, while Margaret
softly sung to her babe, and Thora, with closed eyes, lay slowly
breathing her life away: already so far from this world, that Peter
felt as if it would be cruel selfishness to trouble her more with its
wrongs and its anxieties.

Four days afterward, Thora said to her daughter: "Margaret, I had a
token early this morning. I saw a glorious ship come sailing toward
me. Her sails were whiter than snow und