away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and
choked them."

"Well?" I said.

"Well?" he queried, half petulantly. "It was not well. I was one
of those seeds."

He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying. I
finished my work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to
me.

"Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you
will see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord. I was born within a
hundred miles of that stretch of water. But I was not born
Norwegian. I am a Dane. My father and mother were Danes, and how
they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast I do
not know. I never heard. Outside of that there is nothing
mysterious. They were poor people and unlettered. They came of
generations of poor unlettered people--peasants of the sea who
sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom since time
began. There is no more to tell."

"But there is," I objected. "It is still obscure to me."

"What can I tell you?" he demanded, with a recrudescence of
fierceness. "Of the meagreness of a child's life? of fish diet and
coarse living? of going out with the boats from the time I could
crawl? of my brothers, who went away one by one to the deep-sea
farming and never came back? of myself, unable to read or write,