e the glowing peats, on
the kitchen hearth, seeming, in the dim light, to tower to the very
roof. Margaret looked up with a feeling akin to terror at the large
white face in the gloom above her, and asked faintly, "What is't thou
wants, Snorro?"

"I would speak with Jan."

"He is not come yet to his home. At what hour did he leave the
store?"

At once Snorro's suspicions were aroused. He stood silent a minute,
then he said, "He may have gone round by thy father's. I will wait."

The man frightened her. She divined that he distrusted and disapproved
of her; and she could ask nothing more. She left him with Elga, but in
half an hour she became too restless to bear the suspense, and
returned to the kitchen. Snorro gave her no opportunity to question
him. He said at once, "It is few houses in Shetland a man can enter,
and no one say to him, 'Wilt thou eat or drink?'"

"I forgot, Snorro. I am troubled about Jan. What wilt thou have?"

"What thou hast ready, and Elga will get it for me."

A few minutes later he sat down to eat with a calm deliberation which
Margaret could not endure. She put on her cloak and hood, and calling
Elga, said, "If he asks for me, say that I spoke of my father's
house."

Then she slipped out of the front door, and went with fleet steps into
the town. The street, which was so narrow that it was possible to
shake hands across it, was dark and empty. The shops were all shut,
and the living rooms looked mostly into the closes, or out to the sea.
Only here and there a lighted square of glass made her shrink into the
shadow of the gables. But she made her way without hindrance to a
house near the main quay. It was well lighted, and there was the sound
and stir of music and singing, of noisy conversation and laughter
within it.

Indeed, it was Ragon Torr's inn. The front windows were uncurtained,
and she saw, as she hurriedly passed them, that the main room was full
of company; but she did not pause until within the close at the side
of the house, when, standing in the shadow of the outbuilt chimney,
she peered cautiously through the few small squares on that side. It
was as she suspected. Jan sat in the very center of the company, his
handsome face all aglow with smiles, his hands busily tuning the
violin he held. Torr and half a dozen sailors bent toward him with
admiring looks, and Ragon's wife Barbara, going to and fro in her
household duties, stopped to say something to him, at which every