to take off your trousers in front of the old clothes' man, and wanted
to get upstairs respectably! Those damned brats! 'Pipman's got D. T.,'
they yell. 'Pipman's got D. T. And God knows I haven't got D. T., but I
haven't got any trousers, and that's just the trouble! And these
accursed open staircases! Olsen's hired girl took the opportunity, and
you may be sure she saw all there was to see! You might lend me your old
bags!"

Pelle opened his green chest and took out his work-day trousers.

"You'd better put a few more locks on that spinach-green lumber-chest of
yours," said Pipman surlily. "After all, there might be a thief here,
near heaven as we are!"

Pelle apparently did not hear the allusion, and locked the chest up
again. Then, his short pipe in his hand, he strolled out on to the
platform. Above the roofs the twilight was rising from the Sound. A few
doves were flying there, catching the last red rays of the sun on their
white pinions, while down in the shaft the darkness lay like a hot lilac
mist. The hurdy-gurdy man had come home and was playing his evening
tune down there to the dancing children, while the inhabitants of the
"Ark" were gossiping and squabbling from gallery to gallery. Now and
again a faint vibrating note rose upward, and all fell silent. This was
the dwarf Vinslev, who sat playing his flute somewhere in his den deep
within the "Ark." He always hid himself right away when he played, for
at such times he was like a sick animal, and sat quaking in his lair.
The notes of his flute were so sweet, as they came trickling out of his
hiding place, that they seemed like a song or a lament from another
world. And the restless creatures in the "Ark" must perforce be silent
and listen. Now Vinslev was in one of his gentle moods, and one somehow