Chapter 18 - Page 2

and was filled
with surprise and admiration when he found that they were not stirred.

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