A Hardy Norseman. Lyall Edna

      “I hope so—I hope so,” said Herr Falck, and he took off his spectacles and began to wipe the dim glasses with fingers that trembled visibly.

      The ship was drawing nearer and nearer, and every moment Sigrid realized more that it was not as she had first hoped. Undoubtedly the vessel was high in the water. She glanced apprehensively at her father.

      “I can’t bear this any longer, Sigrid,” he exclaimed. “We will go down to Tydskebryggen, and take a boat and row out to her.”

      They hurried away, speaking never a word. Sigrid feared that her father would send her home, thinking it would be cold for her on the water, but he allowed her to get into the little boat in silence, perhaps scarcely realizing her presence, too much taken up with his great anxiety to think of anything else. As they threaded their way through the busy harbor, she began to feel a little more cheerful. Perhaps, after all, the matter was not so serious. The sun shone brightly on the sparkling water; the sailors and laborers on the vessels and the quays shouted and talked at their work; on a steamer, which they passed, one of the men was cleaning the brass-work and singing blithely the familiar tune of “Sönner av Norge.”

      “We must hope for the best,” said Herr Falck, perhaps also feeling the influence of the cheerful tune.

      Just as they neared the “Solid” the anchor dropped.

      “You had better wait here,” said Heir Falck, “while I go on board. I’ll not keep you long, dear.”

      Nevertheless, anxious waiting always does seem long, and Sigrid, spite of her sealskin jacket, shivered as she sat in the little boat. It was not so much the cold that made her shiver, as that horrible nameless dread, that anxiety which weighed so much more heavily because she did not fully understand it.

      When her father rejoined her, her worst fears were realized. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her, but, just giving a word of direction to the boatman, sat down in his place with folded arms and bent head. She knew instantly that some terrible disaster must have happened, but she did not dare to ask what it was; she just sat still listening to the monotonous stroke of the oars, and with an uneasy wonder in her mind as to what would happen next. They were nearing the shore, and at last her father spoke.

      “Pay the man, Sigrid,” he said, and with an unsteady hand he gave her his purse. He got out of the boat first and she fancied she saw him stagger, but the next moment he recovered himself and turned to help her. They walked away together in the direction of the office.

      “You must not be too anxious, dear child,” he said. “I will explain all to you this evening. I have had a heavy loss.”

      “But, little father, you look so ill,” pleaded Sigrid. “Must you indeed go to the office? Why not come home and rest?”

      “Rest!” said Herr Falck dreamily. “Rest? No, not just yet—not just yet. Send the carriage for me this afternoon, and say nothing about it to any one—I’ll explain it to you later on.”

      So the father and daughter parted, and Sigrid went home to bear as best she could her day of suspense. Herr Falck returned later on, looking very ill, and complaining of headache. She persuaded him to lie down in his study, and would not ask him the question which was trembling on her lips. But in the evening he spoke to her.

      “You are a good child, Sigrid, a good child,” he said, caressing her hand. “And now you must hear all, though I would give much to keep it from you. The Iceland expedition has failed, dear; the vessels have come back empty.”

      “Does it mean such a very great loss to you, father?” she asked.

      “I will explain to you,” he said, more eagerly; “I should like you to understand how it has come about. For some time trade has been very bad; and last year and the year before I had some heavy losses connected with the Lofoten part of the business.”

      He seemed to take almost a pleasure in giving her all sorts of details which she could not half-understand; she heard in a confused way of the three steamers sent to Nordland in the summer with empty barrels and salt for the herrings; she heard about buying at the Bourse of Bergen large quantities, so that Herr Falck had ten thousand barrels at a time, and had been obliged to realize them at ruinous prices.

      “You do not understand all this, my Sigrid,” he said, smiling at her puzzled face. “Well, I’ll tell you the rest more simply. Things were looking as bad as possible, and when in the summer I heard that Haugesund had caught thousands of barrels of herrings in the fjords of Iceland, I made up my mind to try the same plan, and to stake all on that last throw. I chartered sailing vessels, hired hands, bought nets, and the expedition set off—I knew that if it came back with full barrels I should be a rich man, and that if it failed, there was no help for it—my business must go to pieces.”

      Sigrid gave a little cry. “You will be bankrupt?” she exclaimed. “Oh, surely not that, father—not that!”

      She remembered all too vividly the bankruptcy of a well-known timber merchant some years before; she knew that he had raised money by borrowing on the Bank of Norway and on the Savings Bank of Bergen, and she knew that it was the custom of the land that the banks, avoiding risk in that way, demanded two sureties for the loan, and that the failure of a large firm caused distress far and wide to an extent hardly conceivable to foreigners.

      “There is yet one hope,” said Herr Falck. “If the rumor I heard in the summer is false, and if I can still keep the connection with Morgans, that guarantees me seven thousand two hundred kroner a year, and in that case I have no doubt we could avoid open bankruptcy.”

      “But how?” said Sigrid. “I don’t understand.”

      “The Morgans would never keep me as their agent if I were declared a bankrupt, and, to avoid that, I think my creditors would accept as payment the outcome of all my property, and would give me what we call voluntary agreement; it is a form of winding up a failing concern which is very often employed. They would be the gainers in the long run, because of course they would not allow me to keep my seven thousand two hundred kroner untouched, so in any case, my child, I have brought you to poverty.”

      He covered his face with his hands. Sigrid noticed that the veins about his temples stood out like blue cords, so much were they enlarged.

      She put her arm about him, kissing his hair, his hands, his forehead.

      “I do not mind poverty, little father. I mind only that you are so troubled,” she said. “And surely, surely they will not take the agency from you after all these years! Oh, poverty will be nothing, if only we can keep from disgrace—if only others need not be dragged down too!”

      They were interrupted by a tap at the door, and Swanhild stole in, making the pretty little courtesy without which no well-bred Norwegian child enters or leaves a room.

      “Mayn’t I come and say good-night to you, little father?” she asked. “I got on ever so well at school, just as you said, after our merry breakfast.”

      The sight of the child’s unconscious happiness was more than he could endure; he closed his eyes that she might not see the scalding tears which filled them.

      “How dreadfully ill father looks,” said Swanhild uneasily.

      “His head is very bad,” said Sigrid. “Kiss him, dear, and then run to bed.”

      But Herr Falck roused himself.

      “I too will go up,” he said. “Bed is the best place, eh, Swanhild? God bless you, little one; good-night. What, are you going to be my walking-stick?”

      And thus, steadying himself by the child, he went up to his room.

      At breakfast the next morning he was in his place as usual, but he seemed very poorly, and afterward made no suggestion as to going down to the office, but lay on the sofa in his study, drowsily watching the flames in his favorite English fireplace. Sigrid went about the house busy with her usual duties, and for the time so much absorbed that she almost forgot the great trouble hanging over them.