backwards and forwards, as it hung, against the lower rigging,
threatening to destroy it. Salvé Kristiansen had come forward in the
emergency and ventured aloft to cut it adrift; and as he sat there the
whole had gone over the side. He fell with it, but had the luck to be
caught in a top-lift as he fell, and so saved his life. "It was pluckily
done," ended the account, "but nevertheless all is not exactly right
about him, and he is not turning out as well as he promised."

"I never expected very much from him," remarked Carl, with a
contemptuous shrug of his shoulders; "he's a bad lot."

He didn't see the resentful eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for
these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen
with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them. A
resolution was forming in her mind.

Before they retired to rest, Carl whispered to her--

"I have written to my father to-day, and--to-morrow, Elizabeth, is our
betrothal-day!"

Elizabeth was the last in the room, putting it to rights, and when she
left she took a sheet of paper and writing materials with her. She lay
down on her bed; but about midnight she was sitting up by a light and
disfiguring a sheet of paper with writing. It was to this effect:--

"Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to
another.--Elizabeth Raklev."

She folded the paper and fastened it with a pin for want of a wafer, and