ind to
that."

All this might be true, but yet it humiliated Margaret. Besides, she
imagined that every wife in Lerwick was saying, "Not much hold has
Margaret Vedder on her husband. He is off to sea again, and that with
the first boat that sails." Yet if success could have reconciled her,
Jan's was wonderful. Not unfrequently "The Fair Margaret" took twenty
score ling at a haul, and every one was talking of her good luck.

During these days Jan and Snorro drew very close to each other. When
the baits were set most of the men went to sleep for three hours; but
Snorro always watched, and very often Jan sat with him. And oh, the
grand solemnity and serenity of these summer nights, when through
belts of calm the boats drifted and the islands in a charmed circle
filled the pale purple horizon before them. Most fair then was the
treeless land, and very far off seemed the sin and sorrow of life. The
men lay upon the deck, with a pile of nets or their folded arms for a
pillow, and surely under such a sky, like Jacob of old, they dreamed
of angels.

Snorro and Jan, sitting in the soft, mystical light, talked together,
dropping their voices involuntarily, and speaking slowly, with
thoughtful pauses between the sentences. When they were not talking,
Snorro read, and the book was ever the same, the book of the Four
Gospels. Jan often watched him when he thought Jan asleep. In that
enchanted midnight glow, which was often a blending of four
lights--moonlight and twilight, the aurora and the dawning--the
gigantic figure and white face, bending over the little book, had a
weird and almost supernatural interest. Then this man, poor, ugly, and
despised, had an incomparable nobility, and he fascinated Jan.

One night he said to him, "Art thou never weary of reading that same
book, Snorro?"

"Am I then ever weary of thee, my Jan? And these are the words of One
who was the first who loved me. Accordingly, how well I know his
voice." Then, in a fervor of adoring affection, he talked to Jan of
his dear Lord Christ, "who had stretched out his arms upon the cross
that he might embrace the world." And as he talked the men, one by
one, raised themselves on their elbows and listened; and the theme
transfigured Snorro, and he stood erect with uplifted face, and
looked, in spite of his fisher's suit, so royal that Jan felt humbled
in his presence. And when he had told, in his own simple, grand way,
the story of him who had often toiled at m