"But never more her name I'll utter till I die,
For rosy though her lips were, her heart it was a lie."

It sounded melancholy at that hour, and Nils, to judge from the
occasional sighs with which he had accompanied it, was moved. When it
came to an end, Salvé turned suddenly to him.

"You are distressing yourself for another's sweetheart now, Nils. What
would you have done if it had been your own?"

"My wife!" He had evidently not for the moment taken in the idea, and
looked with all his heavy countenance at Salvé.

"Yes. Wouldn't you have liked to see her sunk to the bottom of the sea?"

"My Karen to the bottom of the sea! I'd go there myself first."

"Yes; but if she had been unfaithful to you?" persisted Salvé, seeming
to take a fiendish delight in bringing home the idea to the poor fellow.

"But she is not," was the rejoinder.

Nils had no genius for the abstract, and no more satisfaction was to be
got out of him. But at the same time he had been shocked, and went down
shortly after without saying a word.

Salvé still remained aloft, the dull consciousness of Elizabeth's
engagement with the captain's son alternating with a more active desire
for revenge upon the captain himself for the manner in which he had