Chapter IV


When a country boy in blue homespun, with a peaked cap on his blond
head, goes wandering at random through the streets of a town, it is no
particular concern of any one else. He moves along, gazing in at shop
windows, hands deep in his pockets, whistling, looking at everything
around him--or at nothing at all. And yet--perhaps in the head under
that peaked cap it seems as if a whole little world had suddenly
collapsed, and he may be whistling hard to keep from crying in the
streets for people to see. He steps aside to avoid a cart, and runs into
a man, who drops his cigar in the gutter. "Confounded country lout!"
says the man angrily, but passes on and has forgotten boy and all the
next moment. But a little farther on a big dog comes dashing out of a
yard and unluckily upsets a fat old woman on the pavement, and the boy
with the peaked cap, for all his troubles, cannot help doubling up and
roaring with laughter.

That afternoon, Peer sat on one of the ramparts below the fortress,
biting at a stalk of grass, and twirling the end in his fingers. Below
him lay town and fjord in the mild October sunlight; the rumble of
traffic, the noises from workshops and harbour, came up to him through
the rust-brown luminous haze. There he sat, while the sentry on the
wall above marched back and forth, with his rifle on his shoulder,
left--right--left.

You may climb very high up indeed, and fall down very deep, and no such