hing a wheelbarrow; his companion,
Martin Bruvold, a dark youth with freckles, carried a tub. And both
talked mysteriously in whispers, casting anxious glances out over the
water.

Peer Troen was, of course, the ringleader. That he always was: the
forest fire of last year was laid at his door. And now he had made it
clear to some of his friends that boys had just as much right to lay
out deep-sea lines as men. All through the winter they had been kept at
grown-up work, cutting peat and carrying wood; why should they be left
now to fool about with the inshore fishing, and bring home nothing
better than flounders and coal-fish and silly codlings? The big deep-sea
line they were forbidden to touch--that was so--but the Lofoten fishery
was at its height, and none of the men would be back till it was over.
So the boys had baited up the line on the sly down at the boathouse the
day before, and laid it out across the deepest part of the fjord.

Now the thing about a deep-sea line is that it may bring to the surface
fish so big and so fearsome that the like has never been seen before.
Yesterday, however, there had been trouble of a different sort. To their
dismay, the boys had found that they had not sinkers enough to weight
the shore end of the line; and it looked as if they might have to give
up the whole thing. But Peer, ever ready, had hit on the novel idea of
making one end fast to the trunk of a small fir growing at the outermost
point of the ness, and carrying the line from there out over the open
fjord. Then a stone at the farther end, and with the magic words, "Fie,
fish!" it was paid out overboard, vanishing into the green depths. The
deed was done. True, there were a couple of hooks dangling in mid-air
at the shore end, between the tree and the water, and, while they might
serve to catch an eider duck, or a guillemot, if any one should chance
to come rowing past in the dark and get hung up--why, the boys might
find they had made a human catch. No wonder, then, that they whispered
eagerly and hurried down to the boat.

"Here comes Peter Ronningen," cried Martin suddenly.

This was the third member of the crew, a lanky youth with whitish
eyebrows and a foolish face. He stammered, and made a queer noise
when he laughed: "Chee-hee-hee." Twice he had been turned down in the
confirmation classes; after all, what was the use of learning lessons
out of a book when nobody ever had patience to wait while he said them?

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