better for it. Maren
could never forget that her Soeren belonged to a family who had owned
a farm; and so it was with the children. The sons cared little for
the sea, it was in them to struggle with the land and therefore they
sought work on farms and became day-laborers and ditchers, and as
soon as they saved sufficient money, emigrated to America. Four sons
were farming over there. They were seldom heard of, misfortune
seemed to have worn out their feeling of relationship. The daughters
went out to service, and after a time Soeren and Maren lost sight of
them, too. Only the youngest, Soerine, stayed at home longer than was
usual with poor folks' children. She was not particularly strong,
and her parents thought a great deal of her--as being the only one
they had left.

It had been a long business for Soeren's ancestors to work themselves
up from the sea to the ownership of cultivated land; it had taken
several generations to build up the farm on the Naze. But the
journey down hill was as usual more rapid, and to Soeren was left the
worst part of all when he inherited; not only acres but possessions
had gone; nothing was left now but a poor man's remains.

The end was in many ways like the beginning. Soeren was like the
original man in this also, that he too was amphibious. He understood
everything, farming, fishing and handicraft. But he was not sharp
enough to do more than just earn a bare living, there was never
anything to spare. This was the difference between the ascent and
the descent. Moreover, he--like so many of the family--found it
difficult to attend to his own business.

It was a race which allowed others to gather the first-fruits of
their labors. It was said of them that they were just like sheep,
the more the wool was clipped, the thicker it grew. The downfall had
not made Soeren any more capable of standing up for himself.

When the weather was too stormy for him to go to sea, and there was
nothing to do on his little homestead, he sat at home and patched
seaboots for his friends down in the hamlet. But he seldom got paid
for it. "Leave it till next time," said they. And Soeren had nothing
much to say against this arrangement, it was to him just as good as
a savings bank. "Then one has something for one's old days," said
he. Maren and the girl were always scolding him for this, but Soeren
in this as in everything else, did not amend his ways. He knew well
enough what women were; they never put by