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The Fisher Maiden.
93

me die soon! Dear, good Lord!” she forthwith began, clasping and uplifting her hands, “dear, good Lord, hear me! Already I have wasted my life; it has nothing more to offer me. I am not fit to live; I do not understand life. Dear Lord, let me then die!”

There was such an awful intensity in the prayer, that Gunlaug, who already had harsh words on her lips, swallowed them and laid her hand on her daughter’s arm to draw it away from this prayer.

“Control your feelings, child. Do not tempt the Lord. You must live, however great the pain.”

She rose with these words and never set foot in the loft chamber again.

Ödegaard had fallen into an illness which threatened to be dangerous. At once his old father moved up-stairs to him, took a room next to his for his study, and told every one who begged him to spare himself that this was impossible; his work was to watch over his son every time that son lost any one of those whom he loved more than his father.

Thus matters stood; and now Gunnar came home.

He almost frightened the life out of his mother by appearing long before the vessel he