porridge that very day, though it was only a week-day. And the eldest
son gave him a pair of stockings, and made him sit down and put them on
then and there; and the same night, when he went to bed, the eldest girl
came and tucked him up in a new skin-rug, not quite so hairless as the
old one. His father a captain! It seemed too wonderful to be true.

From that day times were changed for Peer. People looked at him with
very different eyes. No one said "Poor boy" of him now. The other boys
left off calling him bad names; the grown-ups said he had a future
before him. "You'll see," they would say, "that father of yours will get
you on; you'll be a parson yet, ay, maybe a bishop, too." At Christmas,
there came a ten-crown note all for himself, to do just as he liked
with. Peer changed it into silver, so that his purse was near bursting
with prosperity. No wonder he began to go about with his nose in the
air, and play the little prince and chieftain among the boys. Even Klaus
Brock, the doctor's son, made up to him, and taught him to play cards.
But--"You surely don't mean to go and be a parson," he would say.

For all this, no one could say that Peer was too proud to help with the
fishing, or make himself useful in the smithy. But when the sparks flew
showering from the glowing iron, he could not help seeing visions of his
own--visions that flew out into the future. Aye, he WOULD be a priest.
He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse
and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that
it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But
a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles
and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white
robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far
that he could go down into that place of torment where his mother lay,
and bring her up again, up to salvation. And when, in autumn evenings,