idnight with the fishers on
the Galilean sea, as they toiled upon the Shetland waters, there was a
great silence, until Jan said, in a voice that seemed almost strange
to them: "Well, then, mates, now we will look to the lines."

All summer, and until the middle of October, Jan continued at sea; and
all summer, whether fishing for ling, cod, or herring, "The Fair
Margaret" had exceptionally good fortune. There were many other
fishers who woke, and watched, and toiled in their fishing, who did
not have half her "takes." "It is all Jan's luck," said Glumm, "for it
is well known that he flings his nets and goes to sleep while they
fill."

"Well, then, 'it is the net of the sleeping fisherman takes:' that is
the wise saying of old times"--and though Snorro did not think of it,
the Shetland proverb was but the Norse form of the Hebrew faith: "He
giveth his beloved in their sleep."

Still, in spite of his success, Jan was not happy. A married man's
happiness is in the hands of his wife, and Margaret felt too injured
to be generous. She was not happy, and she thought it only just that
Jan should be made to feel it. He had disappointed all her hopes and
aspirations; she was not magnanimous enough to rejoice in the success
of his labors and aims. Besides, his situation as the hired skipper of
a boat was contemptible in her eyes; her servant was engaged to a man
in the same position. Another aggravating circumstance was that her
old schoolmate, the minister's niece (a girl who had not a penny piece
to her fortune) was going to marry a rich merchant from Kirkwall. How
she would exult over "Margaret Vedder who had married a common
fisherman." The exultation was entirely imaginary, but perhaps it hurt
as much as if it had been actually made.

Success, too, had made Jan more independent: or perhaps he had grown
indifferent to Margaret's anger, since he found it impossible to
please her. At any rate, he asked his friends to his house without
fear or apology. They left their footmarks on her floors, and their
fingermarks upon her walls and cushions, and Jan only laughed and
said, "There was, as every one knew, plenty of water in Shetland to
make them clean again." Numberless other little things grieved and
offended her, so little that, taken separately, they might have raised
a smile, but in the aggregate they attained the magnitude of real
wrongs.

But, happy or miserable, time goes on, and about the middle of October
even the