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Updated: June 15, 2025
Next day the Troen folk were sitting at their dinner when the eldest son looked out of the window and said: "There's Peer coming." "Mercy on us!" cried the good-wife, as he came in. "What is the matter, Peer? Are you ill?" Ah, it was good that night to creep in under the old familiar skin-rug once more. And the old mother sat on the bedside and talked to him of the Lord, by way of comfort.
Peer's thoughts were of a thing in a long dressing-gown that had taken his bank book and locked it up and rattled the keys at him and said "Yah!" and deposed him from his bishopric and tried to sneeze and squeeze him into a trade, where he'd have to carry a pressing-iron all his life and be Peer Troen, Tailor. But he wouldn't have that.
A long time passed, and then at last a letter came in a strange hand-writing, and all the grown folks at Troen came together again to read it. But what was their amazement when they read: "You will possibly have learned by now from the newspapers that your benefactor, Colonel Holm, has met his death by a fall from a horse.
They ate cakes from the confectioner's with syrup over them, and drank chocolate, and then Louise played a hymn-tune, in her best style, on her violin, and Peer read the Christmas lessons from the prayer-book it was all just like what they used to do at Troen on Christmas Eve. And that night, after the lamp was put out, they lay awake talking over plans for the future.
But Peer called the pock-marked good-wife at Troen "mother" and her bandy-legged husband "father," and lent the old man a hand wherever he was wanted in the smithy or in the boats at the fishing. His childhood was passed among folk who counted it sinful to smile, and whose minds were gloomy as the grey sea-fog with poverty, psalm-singing, and the fear of hell.
On Sunday evening he put on his blue suit and stiff felt hat, and walked down to the quay. For the first time in his life he had some one else to look after he was to be a father and benefactor from now on to some one worse off than himself. This was something new. The thought came back to him of the jolly gentleman who had come driving down one day to Troen to look after his little son.
Not very big for your age nearly sixteen now, aren't you? Do they give you enough to eat?" "Yes," said Peer, with conviction. The pair walked down together, towards the grey cottage by the fjord. Suddenly the man stopped, and looked at it through half-shut eyes. "Is that where you've been living all these years?" "Yes." "In that little hut there?" "Yes. That's the place Troen they call it."
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