stood an old spinning-wheel covered with dust, and with a smoke-blackened
tuft of wool still hanging from its reel; from which, and from other
small indications, it might be surmised that there had once been a woman
in the house, and that tuft of wool had probably been her last spin.

There sat now on the bench by the hearth a lonely old man, of a
flint-hard and somewhat gloomy countenance, with a mass of white hair
falling over his ears and neck, who was generally occupied with some
cobbling work, and who from time to time, as he drew out the thread,
would make some remark aloud, as if he thought he still had the partner
of his life for audience. The look askance over his brass spectacles
with which he greeted any casual stranger who might come into the house
had very little welcome in it, and an expression about his sunken mouth
and sharp chin said plainly enough that the other might state his
business at once and be gone. He sought no company; and the only time he
had ever been seen at church was when he came rowing over to Tromö with
his wife's body in her coffin. When the pastor sprinkled earth upon it,
it was observed that the tears streamed down his cheeks, and it was long
after dark before he quitted the churchyard to return. He had become a
proverb for obstinacy for miles beyond his own residence; and people who
dealt with him for fish in the harbour, if they once began to bargain,
were as likely as not to see him without a word just quietly row away.

All that was known further about "Old Jacob," as he was called, was that
he had once been a pilot, and that he had had a son who had taken to
drinking, through whose fault it had been eventually that the father had
lost his certificate; and it was thought that on the occasion in
question the father had taken the son's blame upon himself. Since then
he had shunned society, and had retired with his wife to his present
habitation, whither, after their son was drowned, they had brought their