One of Life's Slaves

rried, restless look was stiffened into a dull, staring, fixed mask. It was the crust about his heart, far within the unconscious, degraded man, who enjoyed his daily hour of oblivion to that life-s

ossibly his bill, possibly, too, a remote world of thought, where, like a philosopher, he gazed silently down into unfathomable depths. Or possibly h

e clock struck eight, with his tools in his hand and h

arge wrists, thin arms and a stooping figure, would often come down to fetch him. She had a

houghtfully about him with one hand in his pocket, and an occasionally ejaculated "H'm, h'm!"-until they arrived at Mrs. Selvig

directly" meant, and meanwhile

r the mouth of the river, several of them with the same sort of escort as her father, of wife

narrow passages with which the loading places are furrowed. On each side was a wooden hoarding, and there we

ith her basket, every now and then taking a step backwards, up the heap, to make room for passe

s in there in a crowd round a littl

es turned almost like a bird's, she stood and looke

oking for your sweethea

lai, and he signalled to her, she took no notic

sage, unwashed and sooty

gone

ho

I think it was the man from Gr?nlien they call Ottersnake; and

im into nails! And then I'll pull his red hair to oakum, so th

el and terrible a fate, was nowhere to be seen, his wrath sudden

Ring's,

cut through two or three muddy back yards, which had plank

ought, and how

h jam inside. And it was the two collars, that he had t

; and she must not imagine that they wanted nothing but hammering-no, they had to be hammered out and beaten and bent at

he picnic on Sunday, when he had gone to the woods with the journ

is a capital fellow; he's going to set up f

he others e

sh

el

oo

er with you? Can

f them that'll make a smith's wife-creatures that h

id you

eer; but when I'm a journeyman-but, Silla, t

go in and buy it! Oh, do, Nikolai!" she begged, and as

the way home-some of thos

when he came out again; "you must make haste! Just

ast half an hour for that. And then to mother I have the excuse that it's Saturday evening, and there were so many people in the shop that I could hardly get to the counter. And when I won't have any supper, you know, I'll on

her fashion-"forces you into lies every single da

ead impatiently; she h

h or little, it's all the same. Any one who wants to speak the truth without using his fists to back it up will get thrashed as I did! It doesn't matter for me

ll sadly. She could not bear this unpleasant subject, fo

suddenly be

me, Nikolai. I daren't

e had turned her pocket inside out, and stood holding it while she gazed and searched on th

rt and looking about her, almost beside herself. "The silver was wrapped up in the tw

y, but all at once, with a sudden thought,

ched and

h-heap, for she had stood there and waved her ba

by step, Silla every now and then uttering a despondent, monotonous "Suppose I don't find it!" and

ed the rubbish-heap, they had looked up and

Mrs. Holman was waiting at home

began

twice to be quiet, and he would f

kes to-day, and then throw myself into the sea wit

id not gain a hearing with her. She sat hopeless and des

kened by the week's work. He was gazing intently into an old rotten hole in the log. The hole became more and more rot

es fixed on the ground. She was going to the scaffold. Nikolai accompanied her as far a

low wail said t

wo old yard cats knew of; and from the hoarding at the bottom of the square he saw he

and listened. He heard her still sobbing qui

d rewarded her with such ingratitude, was enough to bring her to her grave. And no one would persuade her either that Holman's hardly-earned week's wages could vanish like steam from a kettle. A half-starved apprentice-boy, walking beside

cy declaring that he had not so much as seen the

there should be no concealment of

and arrested Nikolai. He was to be taken to the police-station for having defra

had never done. The others-Jan Peter, and Katrinus, and Bernt Johan Jakobsen and Petter Evensen-they thought noth

ence did indeed leap up within him, but only to die away again immediately. He had so often had that, and it had always proved to be too thin a sheet of ice to stand upon in the

by which he hoped to escape from his inconvenient companion, the sole

dark, unwilling defiance glowed in his face, and the sharp glance-to

t been with any

only when he was confronted with her and her mother,

ore weight were the facts that had been elucidated on ransacking and examining the room in which he lodged-he lived in a garret at glazier Olsen's with three other apprent

arch for the lost money down by the yard did not seem very

l. This was his foster

young face with the large features, the grey eyes into which there sometimes came a peculiar look, and the cock's comb, of a tinge between zinc and copper, the police i

or the record, "considering that the accused has manifested mala fides by an attempt to escape, as well as

Nikolai's face, which was damp with perspiration; there quivered in it the poor man's curse, at never

on Nikolai was acquitte

with a feeling that all the windows on both sides were looking at him; it w

y in the cupboard under the stairs to be fetched away, and a message

if she had cried aloud about people who drew on her "an ex

e forge again-to H?gberg the master, and Anders B

stopping time after time. What d

d began to whistle. But as he neared the coal-begrimed wooden palings of the work-ya

to lift some bars of pig-iron which had to be moved asid

s not until he and another man had finished hamme

again. Here's some work for you;

of the vices, and was soon busily at

as it were on his feet before the whole workshop, and in his hear

dge. The work went on and Nikolai thought he had never known until to-day how splendid it was to be a smith. He might as well do the key-bit with the fine file at once, while the

the coarse file, until he could scarcely

laughing, and now and again some loud exclamation penetrated to Nikolai. It was only when the boy made a grimace at him, that it occurred to Nikolai that he was t

d what the other one said. It was easy to see what the meaning of it all was, and that he now stood there like a

s who would share his night's lodgi

rds round-they were filing him down at the vices, hammering him flat with the small hamme

h the man was now gathering into his apron, "there are many easier tra

laughed the

down into skirt-pockets with-all the lass

d the hoarse laughter that

s sooty face, and, as their eyes m

ones grew more scornful; Nikolai seemed to see them in a haze, and then the journeyman re

e of surprise before t

asure, how he would strike-strike down the whole smithy one by one until justice

eyes blinded by blue and yellow sparks, and as many of his adversaries around and upon him as t

included the skin, felt himself dragged up and, without

er to rescue him, and who-still only slight

farewell to

later, when the commotion had subsided; he was still r

bend in Nikolai; but

r rang on

irty for that, his clothes too torn and ragged, and, more than anything else,

acks of planks down at the timber-yard. There, in one of the deep square spaces h