They understood what he was come for, it must be to meet the new guardian of the town's virtue, the American lady-doctor. The heavy bows of the English steamer could be seen standing in--they postponed their own departure until they had seen the young lady. Rendalen had got her and her luggage into the boat; she was the only passenger. They must have a look at something so extraordinary. After all, she looked quite a child! a little, slight, active creature, who declined all help as she came up the steps; she was down again in a moment, because the people in the boat turned one of her boxes upside down and she could not explain herself in Norse. She was quickly up again with it, then off to the carriage, into it in a trice--one, two, three--active and smiling; but only when she was seated did she look round with surprise at the gloomy suspicious crowd; a long inquiring look from two large eyes was cast upon them. In the meantime Rendalen gave orders about the luggage, and put something to rights with the reins, before he got up. Her woman's eyes made use of the time. They possessed a clear, cool power of observation; they did not wander over the whole crowd, but picked out several faces here and there from among the young people, quickly, certainly. Those who received a look felt it at the bottom of their hearts, and there was not one of these two hundred young men on the quay who had any doubt but that those eyes could discover several things. A little later in the course of the "skippers' war"--that is to say, just at the end of the holidays--the news spread round the town that lovable Emilie Engel, the friend of the poor, the friend of every one, had been given up by the doctors. Fru Rendalen, in addition to everything else, had had increasing prickings of conscience as regarded Fru Engel, and now the news came to her as a stunning blow. Of all her pupils since Augusta Hansen, no one had been like Emilie Engel, so pretty, so clever, and so good; she had attached herself to Fru Rendalen as to a mother, and had given her, and her alone, her confidence when she became unhappy because she loved the man who deceived her. All the world had known for a long time, what she had only learned in the last year or two. It was Emilie's sufferings which, more than anything else, had made Fru Rendalen glad that Tomas "took it all up," as she expressed it. And now? Neither she nor her son doubted for a moment that every one would be convinced that Tomas Rendalen had killed her by his roughness. The bitterness would all be aroused again with increased strength. Fru Rendalen had not obtained leave from the doctor to see Emilie; Dr. Holmsen had said in his rough way that she was too nearly related to the lecture; this remark had got about.