ways safe with
her, and resumed then absently--

"So the lieutenant is married?"

"This long while," she replied. "The wedding was at the house of the
bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksvaern."

"Elizabeth had no parents," said Salve, rather impatiently.

"Elizabeth?--oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them.
That is quite another story," she said, significantly. "No, the
lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter. The other was
just a passing fancy--the end of it was that she had to go to Holland,
poor thing! It was said she had got a place there."

"Do you know anything for certain of this?" asked Salve, severely, and
with an earnestness that put the little madam out of countenance, and
made her be careful of her words.

"It was all done very secretly, that's true," she replied. "But she went
away in the greatest possible hurry, and the affair was well enough
known, more's the pity--known and forgotten now, one may say."

"What was known?" asked Salve, catching her up, angrily. "Did you see
her, Madam Gjers?"

"Not I, indeed, nor no one else neither. The Becks were living out at
Tromoe at the time; and there was just very good reason for--"

"Then neither you nor any one else who wants to take away her character
know a jot more about the business than what you have chosen to invent,"
said Salve, fiercely and contemptuously; for although he had slain
Elizabeth himself in his heart, he must still defend her against the
attacks of others. He felt quite sick and faint.

"I happen to know the rights of the case," he said, with a short laugh,
looking her coldly and sharply in the face, "and--" he sprang up
suddenly here, and striking the table violently with his fist--"and I
don't taste another morsel in such a scandal-mongering house," he cried.
"Do you understand, madam? Be good enough to take what is owing to you
out of that," and flinging down a handful of silver on to the table, he
sprang over it, and proceeded to drag his chest down-stairs himself.

Madam Gjers exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of
which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from
every creature in the town; but Salve was unappeasable, and slinging his
chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with
the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. For
the present, however, he remained sitting upon the chest, gazing ou