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had said, it was understood that he had disappeared long ago. What was to be done with the boy? Never till now had Peer rightly understood that he was a stranger here, for all that he called the old couple father and mother. He lay awake night after night up in the loft, listening to the talk about him going on in the room below--the good-wife crying and saying: "No, no!", the others saying how hard the times were, and that Peer was quite old enough now to be put to service as a goat-herd on some up-country farm. Then Peer would draw the skin-rug up over his head. But often, when one of the elders chanced to be awake at night, he could hear some one in the loft sobbing in his sleep. In the daytime he took up as little room as he could at the table, and ate as little as humanly possible; but every morning he woke up in fear that to-day--to-day he would have to bid the old foster-mother farewell and go out among strangers. Then something new and unheard of plumped down into the little cottage by the fjord. There came a registered letter with great dabs of sealing-wax all over it, and a handwriting so gentlemanly as to be almost unreadable. Every one crowded round the eldest son to see it opened--and out fell five ten-crown notes. "Mercy on us!" they cried in amazement, and "Can it be for us?" The next thing was to puzzle out what was written in the letter. And who should that turn out to be from but--no other than Peer's father, though he did not say it in so many words. "Be good to the boy," the letter said. "You will receive fifty crowns from me every half-year. See that he gets plenty to eat and goes dry and well shod. Faithfully your, P. Holm, Captain." "Why, Peer--he's--he's--Your father's a captain, an officer," stammered the eldest girl, and fell back a step to stare at the boy. "And we're to get twice as much for him as before," said the son, holding the notes fast and gazing up at the ceiling, as if he were informing Heaven of the fact. But the old wife was thinking of something else as she folded her hands in thankfulness--now she needn't lose the boy. "Properly fed!" No need to fear for that. Peer had treacle with his porridge that very day, though it was only a week-day. And the eldest son gave him a pair of stockings, and made him sit down and put them on then and there; and the same night, when he went to bed, the eldest girl came and tucked him up in a new skin-rug, not quite so hairles
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