He flared up suddenly, and burst out in a thundering voice-- "Don't you ask after your mother, boy ?" Gjert would have been frightened under ordinary circumstances, but his anxiety for his mother, for whom his heart bled, gave him courage to answer boldly-- "Yes, father; I have been wanting all the time to ask how mother was.

Is she not coming?
Poor mother!" and the boy burst into tears, laid his head upon his arm, and sobbed.
"Mother will come back when her aunt over in Arendal is well again," said the pilot, soothingly.

But he soon broke out again.
"You have nothing to blubber for," he said; "you can go in and see her if you like t-omorrow morning the first thing.

You may go now and sleep in our bed." Gjert obeyed; and his father paced to and fro on the floor afterwards for a long while in great agitation.
"That is her game, then, is it ?" he exclaimed.

"She knew what she was about, and she knew who it was she was threatening." He sat down again on the bench-bed with clasped hands, and eyes fixed on the ground.