When the door opened, they saw her sitting just where they had left her, but with a great book open before her, over which she had thrown herself without knowing it. Her tears had trickled down on to its leaves; she observed it, and was about to dry them, when her eye caught sight of an expression of the juicy sort, which she remembered from the street days of her childhood, but which she had never thought to see in print. In her amazement, she forgot to weep, but buried herself in the book,--what an absurd book it was!--She read with open mouth, it grew worse and worse, so low, but so irresistibly amusing, that it was impossible to give up, she must read on; she read, till she forgot all else, she read away both sorrow and hunger, both time and place--with old Father Holberg, for him it was. She laughed, she roared--even now when the pastor and his daughter were standing over her, she did not observe how grave they were, she never thought of her request, but laughed and asked: "Whatever is this, whatever in the world is this?" and she turned to the title page. Then she grew pale, looked up at them, and down again in the book at the well-known characters; there are things that strike the heart like a cannon ball, things that we believed to be hundreds of miles away, we see straight before us,--here on the first page was written: "Hans Odegaard." Blushing crimson she cried: "Is the book his,--is he coming here?" she got up.--"He has promised to do so," answered Signe,--and now Petra remembered, that there was a minister's family in Bergen's shire, whom he had met abroad.--She had travelled only in a circle, she had come just in his path. "Is he coming directly? Perhaps he is here now?" she would at once fly further.--"No, he is ill," said Signe.--"Yes, that is true, he is ill," said Petra, painfully, and sank down. "But tell me," exclaimed Signe, "is it possible you can be----?" "The Fisher Girl!" put in the pastor. Petra looked up entreatingly at them. "Yes, I am the Fisher Girl," she said. But her they knew quite well; for Odegaard had talked of nothing else. "That is another matter," said the dean,--he perceived there was something wrong, needing a little friendly help;--"stay here as long as you will, we shall help you!" Petra looked up in time to see the warm look Signe gave him in thanks; this did her so much good, that she went across, and took both Signe's hands, saying, though bashfully: "As soon as we two are alone, I will tell you all!" One hour after, Signe knew Petra's whole history, which she at once communicated to her father. On his advice, Signe wrote the same day to Odegaard, and continued to do so; as long as Petra was in their house. When that evening Petra laid down to rest, in the soft eider down, in a warm room with crackling birch wood in the stove, and the New Testament laid between the two lights on the white toilet table,--she thanked her God, as she took the book, for all, the evil as well as the good.