“I promised you yesterday, my boy, that you should go to your mother in Arendal.  I daresay she is wanting to see you.”

“If mother is not ill I had rather stay here with you, father, until you go in to see her yourself.  She has Henrik with her.”

“You would?” said his father, in a rather toneless voice, and looking at him as if some new idea had been suggested to him by the boy’s reply.

“But I wish you to go, Gjert,” he said then, suddenly, in a changed tone, that admitted of no further question.  “Mother took no things with her.  You must take her Sunday gown, and what else you know she will want, in with you in the trunk there.  It may be a long while before—­before aunt is well,” he said, and left the house.

While Gjert packed up the things, his father went down to the strand and got the row-boat ready himself for him.

When the boy started he stroked the child’s cheek, but said a little bitterly, “Remember me to your mother now, and say that father is coming, as he promised, on Wednesday.  Be careful, now, how you go.  I have only given you the oars; I don’t like to trust you with a sail in the boat.”

He stood for some time looking after his son as he rowed sturdily away, and then went up to the look-out, where he began to walk up and down with his hands behind his back in his usual manner.  His restlessness of mind, however, soon drove him back again to the house, where he remained alone nearly the whole day.

The first intensity of his anger had so far worked itself off now, that he could think clearly; and the chief feeling which possessed him was one of wonder as to what could have come over her all of a sudden like this.  It could hardly be that scene which they had had when he last went to sea—­it had not been the first of its kind.  No—­it must be something else; it must have been something which had occurred in Arendal.  She had spoken of Fru Beck’s unhappy married life with a certain significance, as if it bore upon their own.  That was evidently it—­she had been talking to Fru Beck; she must have been put up to it by her old friend.

“What gratitude I do owe these Becks!” he exclaimed; “it seems as if every trouble must come from that owl’s nest.”

“She has gone and thought all this at home here, concealing it from me the whole time, submitting, and saying nothing.  Now she has found her opportunity.  And over there, in Arendal, she could, of course, count upon being able to make her own terms against her husband, the unpopular pilot—­could be sure of having every one on her side, from her aunt to these same Becks.”

Yes; and what was the real history of her connection with the Becks?  He had never had that matter satisfactorily cleared up.

“She stipulated that I should trust her—­wouldn’t hear mention of a doubt.  But I have never felt satisfied about that business.”

“I’ll not be fooled by you any longer,” he cried then, flying into a sudden passion, and striding up and down the room.  “It is she who must give me an explanation; it is she who has trampled me under foot!”