buried it beside him.  This man wore a good blue coat and black breeches; and at first we took him to be the captain.  He turned out to be the mate, Knud Lote, who had put on his best clothes when it came to leaving the ship.  His eyes were screwed up, and the brine had frozen over them, like a glaze, or a big pair of spectacles.

3.  Against his knee rested the head of a third man—­one of the three I had first seen sitting amidships.  When the other two toppled overboard this one had slid off the thwart and fallen against the steersman.  He was an oldish man, yellow and thin and marked with the small-pox; the only one in the boat who might have come from some other country than Norway.  His eyes were cast down in a quiet way, and he seemed to be smiling.  He wore a seaman’s loose frock, ragged breeches, and sea-boots.

4 and 5.  Stretched along the bottom-boards lay a tall young man with straw-coloured hair and beard:  and in his arms, tightly clasped, and wrapped in a shawl and seaman’s jacket, a young woman.  Her arms were about the young man and her face pressed close and hidden against his side.  He must have taken off his jacket to warm her; for the upper part of his body had no covering but a flannel shirt and cinglet.

While we stood there the tide drained back, leaving the bows of the boat high and dry.  As I remember, Obed was the first to speak; and he said “She has beautiful hair.”  This was the bare truth:  a great lock of it lay along the bottom-board like a stream of guineas poured out of a sack.  He climbed into the boat and lifted the shawl from her face.

Those neighbours of ours, friends and acquaintances, who afterwards saw Margit Pedersen at Vellingey, and for whom this account is mainly written, will not need a description of her.  Many disliked her:  but nobody denied that she was a lovely woman; and I am certain that nobody could see her face and afterwards forget it.  It was, then and always, very pale:  but this had nothing to do with ill health.  In fact I am not sure it would have been noticeable but for the warm colour of her hair and her red lips and (especially) her eyebrows and lashes, of a deep brown that seemed almost black.  Her lips were blue with the cold, just now:  but the contrast between her eyebrows and her pale face and yellow hair struck me at once and kept me wondering:  until Obed startled me by dropping the shawl and falling on his knees beside her.  “Good God, Dom!” he sang out:  “the girl’s alive!”

The next moment, of course, I was as wild as he.  “Get her out, then,” I cried, “and up to the house at once!”

“I can’t loosen the man’s arms!” Though less than a yard apart, we both shouted at the top of our voices.

“Nonsense!” I answered:  but it was true all the same—­as I found out when I stepped in to Obed’s help.  “We must carry up the pair as they are,” I said.  “There’s no time to lose.”