_AMONG THE VAETTE ROCKS_ It was summer.

Susanna and I were now in our seventeenth year, and it was settled that we should be confirmed in the autumn.
It was this year that my father was involved in his unequal struggle with the authorities--among whom were the sheriff and the minister--as to whether our trading-place should be a permanent stopping-place for the Nordland steamer.

This was a matter of vital importance to my father, and the dispute about it, which also interested the whole district, had already begun to be rather warm.
This was, in fact, not the least important object that the sheriff had in view when he came that summer on a visit to the minister, who was a very influential man.
Outwardly there was as yet no rupture between my father and the minister, and it must have been for the purpose of manifesting this publicly that during the sheriff's visit my father was invited over to the minister's two or three times.
It was thus that my father and I were one day asked to go on a sailing-trip out to the Vaette Rocks, which lay half a mile away.

We were first to fish, and then to eat milk-rings [The thick sour cream off the pans in which milk has been set up.] on land at Gunnar's Place, a house rented from the parsonage.
There was always a certain solemnity about the occasion when the minister's white house-boat with four men at the oars glided out of the bay, and a considerable number of spectators generally stood on shore to watch it.

That day, father, too, stood out on the steps, with a telescope.