Salve’s attention was preoccupied at the moment.  He had heard two voices speaking Norwegian by the window at his back, and it made his heart knock against his ribs—­it was so long since he had heard his mother-tongue.  They were two men belonging to timber ships, and one of them, very red and excited, was singing the praises of one of the girls in the other room.

“Ah!” broke in the other, a Tonsberger, “you should have seen handsome Elizabeth in ‘The Star’ at Amsterdam.  But she wasn’t for such as you to dance with, my lad.”

Salve’s interest was awakened at once.  He listened with strained attention for what might come next.

“And why not?” asked the other, a little on his dignity.

“Well, in the first place, they don’t dance there; and in the next, you would want to be a skipper at least to pay court in that quarter, mind you.  I saw her in the spring of last year, when we were lying there with the Galatea; she was talking to the captain, for she’s Norwegian—­and a proud one she is, too; with hair like a crown of gold on her head, and so straight rigged that it makes a man nervous to come alongside her.”

Salve sat rapt in thought, and more absent than was polite to his friend for the rest of the evening.  An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck.  His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.

When the time came for breaking up, Federigo was drunk, and Salve was obliged to accompany his inconsolable friend in the darkness over the long narrow dam down by the dock, where there was water on both sides, Federigo clinging to his arm the whole way, and leaning heavily upon it.

When they had reached the middle of the dam, Salve saw him make a sudden movement, and almost at the same moment he received a thrust in the region of the heart, of such force that he staggered two or three steps backwards.  At the same time he heard Federigo say, in a voice trembling with vindictive passion—­

“Take that for Paolina, you hound!”

The object of his cupidity, the belt of money, had saved Salve, who now felled him to the ground with a blow that sent him rolling over the embankment into the sea.

“Help! help!” came up to him from the water.

“You shall have it,” replied Salve, derisively, “for our fine friendship’s sake.  Throw up your knife, though, first;” and he made a noose in his handkerchief then to reach down to him.  “You and your owl of a sister,” he muttered as he did so, “have taught me a thing or two.  I should only have had exactly what I deserved if I had been both stuck and plundered, after being fool enough to put faith for one moment in you or any one else.”