d
how many years Jan had respected his wife's selfishness, and forgiven
her want of confidence in him; the thing he had done was an
unpardonable wrong.

Thora said very little. She might have reminded Peter that he had
invested all her fortune in his business, that he always pocketed her
private earnings. But to what purpose? She did not much blame Jan for
taking at last, what many husbands would have taken at first, but she
was angry enough at his general unkindness to Margaret. Yet it was not
without many forebodings of evil she saw Peter store away in an empty
barn all the pretty furniture of Margaret's house, and put the key of
the deserted house in his pocket.

"And I am so miserable!" wailed the wretched wife, morning, noon, and
night. Her money and her husband supplied her with perpetual
lamentations, varied only by pitiful defenses of her own conduct: "My
house was ever clean and comfortable! No man's table was better
served! I was never idle! I wasted nothing! I never was angry! And yet
I am robbed, and betrayed, and deserted! There never was so miserable
a woman--so unjustly miserable!" etc.

"Alas! my child," said Thora, one day, "did you then expect to drink
of the well of happiness before death? This is the great saying which
we all forget: _There_--not here--_there_ the wicked cease from
troubling; _there_ the weary are at rest. _There_ God has promised to
wipe away all tears, but not here, Margaret, _not here_."

CHAPTER V.

SHIPWRECK.

"A man I am, crossed with adversity."

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil;
Would men observingly distill it out."

No man set more nakedly side by side the clay and spirit of his double
nature than Jan Vedder. No man wished so much and willed so little.
Long before he returned from his first voyage, he became sorry for the
deception he had practiced upon his wife, and determined to
acknowledge to her his fault, as far as he saw it to be a fault. He
was so little fond of money, that it was impossible for him to
understand the full extent of Margaret's distress; but he knew, at
least, that she would be deeply grieved, and he was quite willing to
promise her, that as soon as The Solan was clear of debt, he would
begin to repay her the money she prized so much.

Her first voyage was highly successful, and he was, as usual,
sanguine beyond all reasonable probabilities; quite sure, indeed, that
Tulloch and Margaret could both be easily paid