"Mercy on us!" cried the good-wife, as he came in. "What is the matter,
Peer? Are you ill?"

Ah, it was good that night to creep in under the old familiar skin-rug
once more. And the old mother sat on the bedside and talked to him
of the Lord, by way of comfort. Peer clenched his hands under the
clothes--somehow he thought now of the Lord as a sort of schoolmaster
in a dressing-gown. Yet it was some comfort all the same to have the old
soul sit there and talk to him.

Peer had much to put up with in the days that followed--much tittering
and whispers of "Look! there goes the priest," as he went by. At
table, he felt ashamed of every mouthful he took; he hunted for jobs as
day-labourer on distant farms so as to earn a little to help pay for
his keep. And when the winter came he would have to do as the others
did--hire himself out, young and small as he was, for the Lofoten
fishing.

But one day after church Klaus Brock drew him aside and got him to talk
things over at length. First, Klaus told him that he himself was going
away--he was to begin in one of the mechanical workshops in town, and
go from there to the Technical College, to qualify for an engineer. And
next he wanted to hear the whole truth about what had happened to
Peer that day in town. For when people went slapping their thighs and
sniggering about the young would-be priest that had turned out a
beggar, Klaus felt he would like to give the lot of them a darned good
hammering.

So the two sixteen-year-old boys wandered up and down talking, and
in the days to come Peer never forgot how his old accomplice in the