I own that this seemed to me unfeeling.  Outside the churchyard I pulled from my pocket the small Bible.  “This belongs to you,” I said:  “I have kept it to help me with your language”—­but I held it open at the fly-leaf.  She glanced at it, “Oh yes, I gave it to Nils, my husband.  You wish to keep it?”

“You were very fond of him, to judge from this,” I said; and halted, expecting her to be angry.  But she halted too, and said quite coolly—­ looking at me straight—­“Yes?  Oh yes; very much.”

That same evening I spoke to Obed as we sat alone with our pipes.  “I suppose,” said I as carelessly as I could, “Margit Pedersen will be leaving us before long.”  He looked up sharply, and began to shift the logs on the hearth.  “What makes you say so?” he asked.  “Well, she will have friends in Bergen, and business—­” “Has she written to her friends?” he interrupted.  “Not to my knowledge:  but she won’t be staying here for ever, I suppose.”  “When she chooses to go, she can.  Are you proposing to turn her out?  If so, I’d have you to mind that Vellingey is my house, and I am master here.”

This was an unworthy thing to say, and he said it with a fury that surprised me.  Obed and I had not quarrelled since we were boys.  I put a stopper on my tongue, and went on smoking:  and after a while he began to talk again in his natural way on ordinary matters.

Margit stayed on; and to all appearance our life at Vellingey fell back into its old groove.  As a matter of fact there was all the difference in the world—­a difference felt before it was seen, and not to be summed up by saying that a woman sat at our table.  I believe I may quite fairly lay the blame on Obed.  For the first time in our lives he kept a part of his mind hidden from me; he made show enough of frankness in his talk, but I knew him far too well to miss the suspicion behind it.  And his suspicion bred suspicion in me.  Yet though I searched, I could find nothing amiss in his outward bearing.  If he were indeed in love with the girl—­her age, she told us, was twenty-one—­he gave no sign upon which one could lay hold.  And certainly Margit’s bearing towards us was cool and friendly and impartial as the strictest could desire.  Of the two, I had, perhaps, more of her company, simply because Obed spent most of his time in the lugger, while I worked in the fields and within easy reach of an afternoon’s stroll.  Margit would be busy with housework most of the morning, or in the kitchen, helping Selina—­“domineering,” Selina preferred to call it.

For, whatever our feelings, Selina had set her face against the new-comer from the first.  She started, no doubt, with the old woman’s whiddle that no good ever comes of a person saved from the sea.  But as time went on she picked up plenty of other reasons for dislike.  Margit took charge from the day she came downstairs, and had a cold way of seeing that her orders were attended to.  With