them, very red and excited, was singing the praises of one of the girls
in the other room.

"Ah!" broke in the other, a Tonsberger, "you should have seen handsome
Elizabeth in 'The Star' at Amsterdam. But she wasn't for such as you to
dance with, my lad."

Salvé's interest was awakened at once. He listened with strained
attention for what might come next.

"And why not?" asked the other, a little on his dignity.

"Well, in the first place, they don't dance there; and in the next, you
would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind
you. I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with
the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she's Norwegian--and a
proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and
so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her."

Salvé sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend
for the rest of the evening. An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot
through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he
reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been
married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild
longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for
certain how matters actually stood.

When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salvé was
obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the
long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides,