uch tittering
and whispers of "Look! there goes the priest," as he went by. At
table, he felt ashamed of every mouthful he took; he hunted for jobs as
day-labourer on distant farms so as to earn a little to help pay for
his keep. And when the winter came he would have to do as the others
did--hire himself out, young and small as he was, for the Lofoten
fishing.

But one day after church Klaus Brock drew him aside and got him to talk
things over at length. First, Klaus told him that he himself was going
away--he was to begin in one of the mechanical workshops in town, and
go from there to the Technical College, to qualify for an engineer. And
next he wanted to hear the whole truth about what had happened to
Peer that day in town. For when people went slapping their thighs and
sniggering about the young would-be priest that had turned out a
beggar, Klaus felt he would like to give the lot of them a darned good
hammering.

So the two sixteen-year-old boys wandered up and down talking, and
in the days to come Peer never forgot how his old accomplice in the
shark-fishing had stood by him now. "Do like me," urged Klaus. "You're
a bit of a smith already, man; go to the workshops, and read up in your
spare time for the entrance exam to the Technical. Then three years at
the College--the eighteen hundred crowns will cover that--and there you
are, an engineer--and needn't even owe any one a halfpenny."

Peer shook his head; he was sure he would never dare to show his face
before that schoolmaster again, much less ask for the money in the bank.
No; the whole thing was over and done with for him.

"But devil take it, man, surely you can see that this ape of a
schoolmaster dare not keep you out of your money. Let me come with you;
we'll go up and tackle him together, and then--then you'll see." And
Klaus clenched his fists and thrust out one shoulder fiercely.

But when January came, there was Peer in oil-skins, in the foc's'le of
a Lofoten fishing-smack, ploughing the long sea-road north to the
fishing-grounds, in frost and snow-storms. All through that winter he
lived the fisherman's life: on land, in one of the tiny fisher-booths
where a five-man crew is packed like sardines in an air so thick you can
cut it with a knife; at sea, where in a fair wind you stand half the day
doing nothing and freezing stiff the while--and a foul wind means out
oars, and row, row, row, over an endless plain of rolling icy combers;
row, row, ti