h his hand, took
down his socks from a string above the stove, and disappeared through
the door again.

Chapter IV

When a country boy in blue homespun, with a peaked cap on his blond
head, goes wandering at random through the streets of a town, it is no
particular concern of any one else. He moves along, gazing in at shop
windows, hands deep in his pockets, whistling, looking at everything
around him--or at nothing at all. And yet--perhaps in the head under
that peaked cap it seems as if a whole little world had suddenly
collapsed, and he may be whistling hard to keep from crying in the
streets for people to see. He steps aside to avoid a cart, and runs into
a man, who drops his cigar in the gutter. "Confounded country lout!"
says the man angrily, but passes on and has forgotten boy and all the
next moment. But a little farther on a big dog comes dashing out of a
yard and unluckily upsets a fat old woman on the pavement, and the boy
with the peaked cap, for all his troubles, cannot help doubling up and
roaring with laughter.

That afternoon, Peer sat on one of the ramparts below the fortress,
biting at a stalk of grass, and twirling the end in his fingers. Below
him lay town and fjord in the mild October sunlight; the rumble of
traffic, the noises from workshops and harbour, came up to him through
the rust-brown luminous haze. There he sat, while the sentry on the
wall above marched back and forth, with his rifle on his shoulder,
left--right--left.

You may climb very high up indeed, and fall down very deep, and no such
terrible harm done after all, as long as you don't absolutely break your
neck. And gradually Peer began to realise that he was still alive, after
all. It is a bad business when the world goes against you, even though
you may have some one to turn to for advice and sympathy. But when all
the people round you are utter strangers, there is nothing to be done
but sit down and twirl a straw, and think things out a bit for yourself.
Peer's thoughts were of a thing in a long dressing-gown that had taken
his bank book and locked it up and rattled the keys at him and said
"Yah!" and deposed him from his bishopric and tried to sneeze and
squeeze him into a trade, where he'd have to carry a pressing-iron all
his life and be Peer Troen, Tailor. But he wouldn't have that. He sat
there bracing himself up, and trying to gather together from somewhere
a thing he had never had much need of before--to wit, a w