our seventeenth year, and it
was settled that we should be confirmed in the autumn.

It was this year that my father was involved in his unequal struggle
with the authorities--among whom were the sheriff and the minister--as
to whether our trading-place should be a permanent stopping-place for
the Nordland steamer. This was a matter of vital importance to my
father, and the dispute about it, which also interested the whole
district, had already begun to be rather warm.

This was, in fact, not the least important object that the sheriff had
in view when he came that summer on a visit to the minister, who was a
very influential man.

Outwardly there was as yet no rupture between my father and the
minister, and it must have been for the purpose of manifesting this
publicly that during the sheriff's visit my father was invited over to
the minister's two or three times.

It was thus that my father and I were one day asked to go on a
sailing-trip out to the Vaette Rocks, which lay half a mile away. We were
first to fish, and then to eat milk-rings [The thick sour cream off the
pans in which milk has been set up.] on land at Gunnar's Place, a house
rented from the parsonage.

There was always a certain solemnity about the occasion when the
minister's white house-boat with four men at the oars glided out of the
bay, and a considerable number of spectators generally stood on shore to
watch it. That day, father, too, stood out on the steps, with a
telescope. He had excused himself from going, but with good tact had let
me go.

In the cabin, which was open on account of the heat, sat the minister's
wife and the sheriff's two ladies, and outside, one on each side, the
minister and the sheriff, smoking their silver-mounted meerschaum pipes,
and chatting comfortably: they were college-friends. Susanna and I,
together with the housemaid from Trondhjem, who was adorned for the
occasion, had a place in the roomy bow. The minister's wife wanted to
keep that part of the boat in which she had an immense provision
basket--a regular portable larder--under her own eye. The big basket and
the little lady entirely occupied one bench, while the two other ladies,
with their starched dresses, quite filled up the rest of the narrow
cabin.

There was not a breath stirring, and the West Fjord heaved in long,
smooth swells. The fjord lay like a giant at rest, sunning itself. The
wonderfully clear air allowed the eye to see over the mountain