foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily
insured. And he knew who was a thief and who a bankrupt speculator,
and that Merchant Lau only did business with the little shopkeepers,
because his daughter had gone to the bad. Pelle knew the secret
pride of the town, the "Top-galeass," as she was called, who in her
sole self represented the allurements of the capital, and he knew
the two sharpers, and the consul with the disease which was eating
him up. All this was very gratifying knowledge for one of the
rejected.

He had no intention of letting the town retain any trace of those
splendors with which he had once endowed it. In his constant
ramblings he stripped it to the buff. For instance, there stood the
houses of the town, some retiring, some standing well forward, but
all so neat on the side that faced the street, with their wonderful
old doorways and flowers in every window. Their neatly tarred
framework glistened, and they were always newly lime-washed, ochrous
yellow or dazzling white, sea-green, or blue as the sky. And on
Sundays there was quite a festive display of flags. But Pelle had
explored the back quarters of every house; and there were sinks and
traps there, with dense slimy growths, and stinking refuse-barrels,
and one great dustbin with a drooping elder-tree over it. And the
spaces between the cobble-stones were foul with the scales of
herrings and the guts of codfish, and the lower portions of the
walls were covered with patches of green moss.

The bookbinder and his wife went about hand in hand when they set
out for the meeting of some religious society. But at home they
fought, and in chapel, as they sat together and sang out of the
same hymn-book, they would secretly pinch one another's legs. "Yes,"