strange
look of men from lands unknown and far off. Jan had once sailed in
her, and her first mate was his friend. It was like meeting one from
the dead. Proudly and gladly he took him to his home. He wanted him to
see his beautiful wife. He was sure Margaret would be delighted to
welcome a man so brave, and so dear to him.

On the contrary, it was a deep offense to her. Christian Groat, in his
sheepskin suit, oily and storm-stained, unkempt and unshorn, seemed
strangely out of place in her spotless room. That he had fought with
the elements, and with the monsters of the deep, made him no hero in
her eyes. She was not thrilled by his adventures upon drifting floes,
and among ice mountains reeling together in perilous madness. The
story made Jan's blood boil, and brought the glistening tears into his
big blue eyes; but Margaret's pulses beat no whit quicker. Christian
Groat was only a vulgar whaler to her, and that Jan should bring him
to her hearth and table made her angry.

Jan was hurt and humiliated. The visit from which he had hoped so
much, was a pain and a failure. He walked back into the town with his
friend, and was scarcely able to speak. Margaret also was silent and
grieved. She thought Jan had wronged her. She had to make a clean
cushion for the chair in which the man had sat. She persisted for days
in smelling whale oil above the reek of the peat, above even the salt
keenness of the winter air. Her father had never done such a thing;
she could not understand Jan's thoughtlessness about her.

For two days she was silent, and Jan bore it very well, for he, too,
was hurt and angry. On the third he spoke to his wife, and little by
little the coolness wore away. But an active quarrel and some hard
words had perhaps been better, for then there might have followed some
gracious tears, and a loving reconciliation. As it was, the evenings
wore silently and gloomily away. Margaret sat, mechanically knitting,
her beautiful face wearing an expression of injury and resignation
that was intolerably annoying to a man of Jan's temper. But though she
said nothing to her husband during these unhappy hours, the devil
talked very plainly in her place.

"Why," he asked Jan, "do you stay beside a sulky woman, when there are
all your old companions at Ragon Torr's? There, also, is the song and
the tale, and the glass of good fellowship. And who would be so
heartily welcome as Jan Vedder?"

Jan knew all this well. But as he d