e ends projected on every side, and at
every conceivable angle. Many of their foundations were drilled out of
the rock upon the shore, and the smooth waters of the bay were six
feet deep at the open doors or windows.

The utmost quiet reigned there. Shetland possessed no carts or
carriages, and only the clattering of a shelty's gallop, or the song
of a drunken sailor disturbed the echoes. The whole place had a
singular, old-world look, and the names over the doors carried one
back to Norseland and the Vikings. For in these houses their children
dwelt, still as amphibious as their forefathers, spending most of
their lives upon the sea, rarely sleeping under a roof, or warming
themselves at a cottage fire; a rugged, pious, silent race, yet
subject, as all Norsemen are, to fits of passionate and uncontrollable
emotion.

Prominently among the Thorkels and Halcros, the Yools and Traills,
stood out the name of Peter Fae. Peter had the largest store in
Lerwick, he had the largest fish-curing shed, he was the largest boat
owner. His house of white stone outside the town was two stories high,
and handsomely furnished; and it was said that he would be able to
leave his daughter Margaret L10,000; a very large fortune for a
Shetland girl. Peter was a Norseman of pronounced type, and had the
massive face and loose-limbed strength of his race, its faculty for
money-getting, and its deep religious sentiment. Perhaps it would be
truer to say, its deep Protestant sentiment, for Norsemen have always
been Protestants; they hated the Romish church as soon as they heard
of it.

If the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American wishes to see whence came the
distinguishing traits of his race, let him spend a few weeks among the
Shetland Norsemen, for they have pre-eminently those qualities we are
accustomed to pride ourselves upon possessing--the open air freshness
of look, the flesh and blood warmth of grip, the love of the sea, the
resolute earnestness of being and doing, the large, clear sincerity of
men accustomed to look stern realities in the face.

Peter's wife, Thora, was also of pure Norse lineage, and in many an
unrecognized way her ancestors influenced her daily life. She had
borne four sons, but, in the expressive form of Shetland speech, "the
sea had got them;" and her daughter Margaret was the sole inheritor of
their gathered gold. Thora was a proud, silent woman, whose strongest
affections were with her children in their lonely sea gra