“Elizabeth,” he said then, despondently, turning round, “you still must know in your heart that you have been everything in this world to me.  But I know where my great fault to you has been, and I’ll tell it you now, fully and freely, even if you must despise me for it.  Yes, Elizabeth, it is true I have never been able to feel absolutely certain that I had full possession of your heart—­though, God be praised, you have taught me differently to-day—­since that time,”—­it evidently cost him a struggle to go on with the humiliating confession—­“since that business between you and the lieutenant.  That has been the thorn in my flesh,” he said, gently, as if opening his inmost heart to her, “which I have not been able to get rid of, in spite of my better reason.  And I don’t know but what it may still be there.  There lies my weakness—­I tell it you plainly and honestly; but at the same time I can’t give you up, Elizabeth.

“I have always seen,” he continued, “that the proper husband for you would have been a man who was something in the world—­such a one as he, and not a man of no position like me.  In my pride I never could bear the thought—­and it is that that has made me so full of rancour against all the world, and so suspicious and bad towards you.  I have not been strong enough—­not like you—­but I can truly say I have struggled with my weakness, Elizabeth,” he said, pale with intensity of feeling, and laying both his hands on her shoulders, and looking into her face.

She felt that his arms were trembling, and her eyes filled with tears—­it went to her heart to see him like this.  All at once on a sudden thought she withdrew herself from his hands and went into the little room adjoining the one they were in, and opened a drawer there.  She came out with the old note in her hand and held it out to him—­

“That is the letter I wrote to the lieutenant the night I left the Becks’.”

He looked at her a little wonderingly.

“Fru Beck gave it to me,” she said.  “Read it, Salve.”

He looked at the large clumsy writing and spelt out—­

“Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—­Elizabeth Raklev.”

He sat down on the bench and read it over again, while she bent over him, looking now at the writing, and now at his face.

“What do you find there, Salve?” she asked.  “Why could I not be Beck’s wife?”

“‘Because my heart is given to another,’” he answered, slowly, and looking up at her with moistened eyes.

“Not yours; it is I who loved another.  And who was that other?”

“God bless you—­it was me!” he said, and drew her down upon his knee into a long, long embrace.

* * * * *

The boys had become tired of waiting down at the boat, the “bagman” especially, since it was clearly past dinner-time; the bell had rung over at the dry-dock, and the town boys had already passed from school.  His white head and heated face appeared now at the kitchen-door, and with scarcely a glance over to where his father and mother were sitting on the bench together looking very happy, he turned at once to the hearth and became aware of the sad fact that there was positively no porridge to be seen; there was not even a fire.  Coming bodily into the room, he asked, with tears in his voice—­