In a couple who were coming out at the same time, he recognised Captain Beck and his wife, and the sight added fuel to the flames.

He hastened on; and was hardly to be recognised as the same man who had gone up the same way so quietly two hours before.
He had meant to go over at once to Sandvigen to see his father, but he thought that before going it would be as well to find out for certain all about Elizabeth; and his landlady seemed as likely a person to be able to satisfy him as any one.

He remembered well that sharp, bright-eyed little woman, and knew that she was a regular magpie for chatter, and for repeating the gossip of the town.
At that time of the day on Sunday there were no other customers in the house, and while she was busying herself with preparations for his dinner, he asked casually if Captain Beck's son, the one in the navy, was married?
"To be sure he is," she replied, surprised to hear him speak Norwegian.
"He has been married for--let me see--about three years." She looked fixedly at him.
"But who are you ?" she asked; and then, as if the thought had suddenly flashed upon her, she said, "It's never Salve Kristiansen, who--" She stopped here, and Salve dryly finished the sentence for her-- "Who deserted from Beck at Rio ?--the same." Madam Gjers was agog with curiosity, and whispered, "I'll say nothing--you may trust me;" and waited eagerly then for further particulars which she might take the first opportunity of retailing.
Salve assured her that he knew of old that a secret was always safe with her, and resumed then absently-- "So the lieutenant is married ?" "This long while," she replied.

"The wedding was at the house of the bride's parents; and they are living now at Frederiksvaern." "Elizabeth had no parents," said Salve, rather impatiently.
"Elizabeth ?--oh! you mean the girl the Becks took to live with them.
That is quite another story," she said, significantly.

"No, the lieutenant's wife was Postmaster Forstberg's daughter.