He had not been able to get out of his head the idea that Elizabeth was now in Amsterdam, in spite of the almost certain feeling which he had that she had been long ago married to young Beck.  His thoughts kept returning to, and dwelling upon, this subject, and he began to sound the skipper as to whether the trade with Holland was a paying one, and to post himself up generally in all particulars.  Their conversation was carried on in a kind of jumble of English chiefly, and he gathered, at all events, that it was a lucrative business, and an occupation which seemed likely to suit him in every way.  It was adventurous, and that was a recommendation; and a way of living at home in which he would be under nobody’s orders but his own, fell in exactly with his nature.  He had more than money enough to purchase some old craft or other, and—­in fact, it was decided; he would be the owner of a timber ship, and ply to Holland.

He began now to look out more impatiently than ever for land, and longed so to catch the first streak of the Norwegian coast above the horizon, as if it was something he hardly dared hope that he should live to see.  He paced up and down for hours together, anathematising through his teeth the old tub with her slack sails and rolling motion—­they seemed to be drifting, not sailing; and from the restlessness and impatience he exhibited, it began to be whispered among the crew that the Englishman must have a screw loose somewhere.  When the dim outline of Lindesnaes became discernible at last in the far distance, there was not a palm-clad promontory in all the southern seas that could compare with it, he thought; and the pleasure he experienced was only dashed by the apprehension of what he might have to learn about Elizabeth on landing.

They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers’s unpretending lodging-house until the morning.

The following day was Sunday.  And as he listened to the bells ringing, and watched the townspeople, great and small, going decorously up the street in their best clothes to church—­most of them he recognised, and among them Elizabeth’s old aunt going up by herself, with her psalm-book and her white folded handkerchief in her hand—­an indescribable feeling came over him, and his eyes filled so that he could hardly see.  Here passing before him were all the gentleness and the purity that he had once believed in, when his young faith had as yet received no shock, and when he was as joyous and credulous as the rest; and he could not resist the temptation of joining the stream, trusting to the alteration in his appearance to save him from recognition.