deal since you saw me," said the man, suddenly
dropping into Norwegian. "I am Gustav Olson,
I used to live in the same house with you once,
but that is long ago now."

Gustav Olson--to be sure, he was the porter's
son in the house, where his mother had once
during his childhood, taken a flat. He well
remembered having clandestinely traded jack-
knives and buttons with him, in spite of the
frequent warnings he had received to have nothing
to do with him; for Gustav, with his broad
freckled face and red hair, was looked upon by
the genteel inhabitants of the upper flats as
rather a disreputable character. He had once
whipped the son of a colonel who had been
impudent to him, and thrown a snow-ball at the
head of a new-fledged lieutenant, which offenses
he had duly expiated at a house of correction.
Since that time he had vanished from Halfdan's
horizon. He had still the same broad freckled
face, now covered with a lusty growth of coarse
red beard, the same rebellious head of hair,
which refused to yield to the subduing influences
of the comb, the same plebeian hands and feet,
and uncouth clumsiness of form. But his linen
was irreproachable, and a certain dash in his
manner, and the loud fashionableness of his
attire, gave unmistakable evidences of prosperity.