home, true to him, waiting for his return. She was more beautiful
even than Bodil and yellow-haired Marie put together, and whole
crowds followed her footsteps, but she sat at home and was faithful,
and she would sing the old love-song:

"I had a lad, but he went away
All over the false, false sea,
Three years they are gone, and now to-day
He writes no more to me!"

And while she sang the letter came to the door. But out of every
letter that his father Lasse received fell ten-kroner banknotes,
and one day a letter came with steamer-tickets for the two of them.
The song would not serve him any further, for in the song they
perished during the voyage, and the poor young man spent the rest
of his days on the sea-shore, gazing, through the shadow of insanity,
upon every rising sail. She and Lasse arrived safely--after all sorts
of difficulties, that went without saying--and Pelle stood on the
shore and welcomed them. He had dressed himself up like a savage,
and he carried on as though he meant to eat them before he made
himself known.

_Houp la!_ Pelle jumped to his feet. Up the road there was
a rattling and a clanking as though a thousand scythes were clashing
together: an old cart with loose plank sides came slowly jolting
along, drawn by the two most miserable moorland horses he had ever
seen. On the driver's seat was an old peasant, who was bobbing about
as though he would every moment fall in pieces, like all the rest
of his equipment. Pelle did not at first feel sure whether it was
the cart itself or the two bags of bones between the shafts that