As Gabriel neither found his friend nor saw anything of the carriage from Sandsgaard, which generally met him on his way from school, he set off to walk homewards, down the long avenue which led to the family property.  It was a good half-hour’s walk, and while he sauntered along, swinging his heavy burden of the books he so cordially hated, he was lost in gloomy thought.  Every day, on his way from school, he met the younger clerks going to their dinner in the town.  They looked tired and weary, it is true; still, he envied them their permission to sit working the whole day in the office—­a paradise with which he, although his father’s son, had no connection whatever.  He was obliged to confine his energy to the building-yard, where there were plenty of hiding-places, and where the Consul was seldom seen of an afternoon.  The ship on the stocks was at once his joy and his pride; he crept all over her, inside and out, above and below, scrutinizing every plank and every nail.  At length he had begun to have quite a knowledge of the art of ship-building, and had gained the friendship of Tom Robson, Anders Begmand, and the other shipwrights.  The ship was to be the finest the town had yet produced, and when this fact came into his thoughts it almost enabled him to forget his burden of Greek and Latin.

From conversations he had partly overheard at home, Gabriel knew that there had been a difference of opinion between his father and Morten, the eldest son, who was a partner in the firm, ever since the building of this ship was first mentioned.

Morten maintained that they ought to buy an iron steamer in England, either on their own account or in partnership with some of the other houses of the town.  He insisted, particularly, that the time could not be far distant when sailing ships would be entirely superseded by steamers.  But the father held by sailing ships on principle; and, moreover, the idea that Garman and Worse should have anything in common with the mushroom houses of the town was to him quite unbearable.  In the end, the will of the elder prevailed; the ship was built of their own materials, in their own ship-yard, and by the workmen who from generation to generation had worked for Garman and Worse.

When Gabriel reached the point from which he could see down into the bay on which lay the property of Sandsgaard, the ship was the first thing which caught his eye.  She stood on the slip below the house, and he could not help remarking the beauty of her bow, and the elegant rake of her stern.  It was the dinner-hour, and all the workmen were either at home, in the cottages which stretched along the west side of the bay, or lay asleep among the shavings.  As he stood on the crest of the rising ground, which sloped gradually down towards the buildings, and gazed at all these dominions, which from time out of mind had belonged to Garman and Worse, Gabriel became more and more out of spirits.