Chapter V


In a narrow alley off Sea Street lived Gorseth the job-master, with a
household consisting of a lean and skinny wife, two half-starved horses,
and a few ramshackle flies and sledges. The job-master himself was a
hulking toper with red nose and beery-yellow eyes, who spent his nights
in drinking and got home in the small hours of the morning when his wife
was just about getting up. All through the morning she went about the
place scolding and storming at him for a drunken ne'er-do-well, while
Gorseth himself lay comfortably snoring.

When Peer arrived on the scene with his box on his shoulder, Gorseth was
on his knees in the yard, greasing a pair of leather carriage-aprons,
while his wife, sunken-lipped and fierce-eyed, stood in the kitchen
doorway, abusing him for a profligate, a swine, and the scum of the
earth. Gorseth lay there on all-fours, with the sun shining on his bald
head, smearing on the grease; but every now and then he would lift his
head and snarl out, "Hold your jaw, you damned old jade!"

"Haven't you a room to let?" Peer asked.

A beery nose was turned towards him, and the man dragged himself up and
wiped his hands on his trousers. "Right you are," said he, and led the
way across the yard, up some stairs, and into a little room with two
panes of glass looking on to the street and a half-window on the yard.
The room had a bed with sheets, a couple of chairs, and a table in front
of the half-window. Six and six a month. Agreed. Peer took it on the
spot, paid down the first month's rent, and having got rid of the man