pple in the water, or a gust on the heights, or a cloud in the sky,
come back. Such is my command, Erica."

"Wife," said Peder, "give her your pelisse; that will save her seeing
the girls before she goes. And she shall have my cap, and then there is
not an eye along the fiord that can tell whether she is man or woman."

Ulla lent her deerskin pelisse willingly enough; but she entreated that
Oddo might be kept at home. She folded her arms about the boy with
tears; but Peder decided the matter with the words, "Let him go; it is
the least he can do to make up for last night. Equip, Oddo."

Oddo equipped willingly enough. In two minutes he and his companion
looked like two walking bundles of fur. Oddo carried a frail-basket,
containing rye-bread, salt-fish, and a flask of corn-brandy; for in
Norway no one goes on the shortest expedition without carrying
provisions.

"Surely it must be dusk by this time," said Peder.

It was dusk; and this was well, as the pair could steal down to the
shore without being perceived from the house. Madame Erlingsen gave
them her blessing, saying that if the enterprise saved them from nothing
worse than Hund's company this night, it would be a great good. There
could be no more comfort in having Hund for an inmate; for some improper
secret he certainly had. Her hope was that, finding the boat gone, he
would never show himself again.

"One would think," continued the lady, when she returned from watching
Erica and Oddo disappear in the dusk--"one would think Erica had never
known fear. Her step is as firm and her eye as clear as if she had
never trembled in the course of her life."

"She knows how to act to-night," said Peder; "and she is going into
danger for her lover, instead of waiting at home while her lover goes
into danger for her. A hundred pirates in the fiord would not make her
tremble as she trembled last night. Rather a hundred pirates than Nipen
angry, she would say."

"There is her weakness," observed her mistress.

"Can we speak of weakness after what we have just seen--if I may say so,
madam?"

"I think so," replied Madame Erlingsen. "I think it a weakness in those
who believe that a just and tender Providence watches over us all, to
fear what any power in the universe can do to them."

"M. Kollsen does not make progress in teaching the people what you say,
madam. He only gets distrusted by it."

"When M. Kollsen has had more experience, he will find