steep thatched roof higher than any other roof in the fishing-village.  The floor lay deep down in the ground.  The window was neither high nor wide, but nevertheless it reached from the cornice to the level of the earth.  There had been no space for a chimney-breast in the one narrow room and she had been obliged to add a small, square projection.  The cottage had not, like the other cottages, its fenced-in garden with gooseberry bushes and twining morning-glories and elder-bushes half suffocated by burdocks.  Of all the vegetation of the fishing-village, only the burdocks had followed the cottage to the sand-hill.  They were fine enough in summer with their fresh, dark-green leaves and prickly baskets filled with bright, red flowers.  But towards the autumn, when the prickles had hardened and the seeds had ripened, they grew careless about their looks, and stood hideously ugly and dry with their torn leaves wrapped in a melancholy shroud of dusty cobwebs.

The cottage never had more than two owners, for it could not hold up that heavy roof on its walls of reeds and clay for more than two generations.  But as long as it stood, it was owned by poor widows.  The second widow who lived there delighted in watching the burdocks, especially in the autumn, when they were dried and broken.  They recalled her who had built the cottage.  She too had been shrivelled and dry and had had the power to cling fast and adhere, and all her strength had been used for her child, whom she had needed to help on in the world.  She, who now sat there alone, wished both to weep and to laugh at the thought of it.  If the old woman had not had a burr-like nature, how different everything would have been!  But who knows if it would have been better?

The lonely woman often sat musing on the fate which had brought her to this spot on the coast of Skone, to the narrow inlet and among these quiet people.  For she was born in a Norwegian seaport which lay on a narrow strip of land between rushing falls and the open sea, and although her means were small after the death of her father, a merchant, who left his family in poverty, still she was used to life and progress.  She used to tell her story to herself over and over again, just as one often reads through an obscure book in order to try to discover its meaning.

The first thing of note which had happened to her was when, one evening on the way home from the dressmaker with whom she worked, she had been attacked by two sailors and rescued by a third.  The latter fought for her at peril of his life and afterwards went home with her.  She took him in to her mother and sisters, and told them excitedly what he had done.  It was as if life had acquired a new value for her, because another had dared so much to defend it.  He had been immediately well received by her family and asked to come again as soon and as often as he could.