!" But Peer called the pock-marked good-wife at
Troen "mother" and her bandy-legged husband "father," and lent the old
man a hand wherever he was wanted--in the smithy or in the boats at the
fishing.

His childhood was passed among folk who counted it sinful to smile, and
whose minds were gloomy as the grey sea-fog with poverty, psalm-singing,
and the fear of hell.

One day, coming home from his work at the peat bog, he found the elders
snuffling and sighing over their afternoon meal. Peer wiped the sweat
from his forehead, and asked what was the matter.

The eldest son shoved a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, wiped his
eyes, swallowed, and said: "Poor Peer!"

"Aye, poor little chap," sighed the old man, thrusting his horn spoon
into a crack in the wall that served as a rack.

"Neither father nor mother now," whimpered the eldest daughter, looking
over to the window.

"Mother? Is she--"

"Ay, dearie, yes," sighed the old woman. "She's gone for sure--gone to
meet her Judge."

Later, as the day went on, Peer tried to cry too. The worst thing of all
was that every one in the house seemed so perfectly certain where his
mother had gone to. And to heaven it certainly was not. But how could
they be so sure about it?

Peer had seen her only once, one summer's day when she had come out
to see the place. She wore a light dress and a big straw hat, and he
thought he had never seen anything so beautiful before. She made no
secret of it among the neighbours that Peer was not her only child;
there was a little girl, too, named Louise, who was with some folks
away up in the inland parishes. She was in high spirits, and told risky
stories and sang songs by no means sacred. The old people shook their
heads over her--the younger ones watched her with sidelong glances. And
when she left, she kissed Peer, and turned round more than once to look
back at him, flushed under her big hat, and smiling; and it seemed to
Peer that she must surely be the loveliest creature in all the world.

But now--now she had gone to a place where the ungodly dwell in
such frightful torment, and no hope of salvation for her through all
eternity--and Peer all the while could only think of her in a light
dress and a big straw hat, all song and happy laughter.

Then came the question: Who was to pay for the boy now? True, his
baptismal certificate said that he had a father--his name was Holm,
and he lived in Christiania--but, from what the mother