ll having enough to do
to earn their bread and keep the wolf from the door. Maren describes
him as tall, powerful, dark, with a peculiarly quiet manner. She says
she never saw him drunk--he seemed always anxious to keep his wits
about him: he would linger on the outskirts of a drunken brawl,
listening to and absorbing everything, but never mixing himself up in
any disturbance. He was always lurking in corners, lingering, looking,
listening, and he would look no man straight in the eyes. She spoke,
however, of having once heard him disputing with some sailors, at
table, about some point of navigation; she did not understand it, but
all were against Louis, and, waxing warm, all strove to show him he
was in the wrong. As he rose and left the table she heard him mutter
to himself with an oath, "I know I'm wrong, but I'll never give in!"
During the winter preceding the one in which his hideous deed was
committed he lived at Star Island and fished alone, in a wherry; but
he made very little money, and came often over to the Hontvets, where
Maren gave him food when he was suffering from want, and where he
received always a welcome and the utmost kindness. In the following
June he joined Hontvet in his business of fishing, and took up his
abode as one of the family at Smutty-Nose. During the summer he was
"crippled," as he said, by the rheumatism, and they were all very good
to him, and sheltered, fed, nursed and waited upon him the greater
part of the season. He remained with them five weeks after Ivan and
Anethe arrived, so that he grew to know Anethe as well as Maren, and
was looked upon as a brother by all of them, as I have said before.
Nothing occurred to show his true character, and in November he left
the island and the kind people whose hospitality he was to repay so
fearfully, and going to Portsmouth he took passage in another fishing
schooner, the Addison Gilbert, which was presently wrecked off the
coast, and he was again thrown out of employment. Very recklessly he
said to Waldemar Ingebertsen, to Charles Jonsen, and even to John
Hontvet himself, at different times, that "he must have money if he
murdered for it." He loafed about Portsmouth eight weeks, doing
nothing. Meanwhile Karen left our service in February, intending to go
to Boston and work at a sewing-machine, for she was not strong and
thought she should like it better than housework, but before going she
lingered awhile with her sister Maren--fatal delay f