The elder brother's face was flushed with the fight; his look of patient resignation was gone. "You've given them a lesson, you may be sure," went on the younger. "They'll know better than to trouble you again. But what made you take it so patiently all this time, when you're a match for the worst of them?" Now for the first time Sven Elversson lost his self-control. Sinking down in a chair, he buried his face in his hands. "What's the use?" he cried, desperately. "How can I defend myself when all the time I hate myself more than any of them can ever do? Hate and loathe myself worse than you can ever think. Horrible, horrible. No one knows as well as I do what it is I've done--what it is I've sinned against. Is it any comfort to me to stop the mouths of a drunken crowd when all the time I've that on my mind that's ghastlier than all?" THE "NAIAD" A FEW days after Christmas, Ung-Joel came back to Grimön with a message from Olaus, to ask if Sven would take a share in the herring fishery on board the motor-boat _Naiad_, belonging to his crew. "He says it's hardly likely you could get taken on with any other crew," said Ung-Joel; "but seeing that you're my brother, I was to tell you. They'll not be the best of company, I doubt, that sail with Olaus." Mor Elversson declared at once that it was out of the question; Sven should never have any dealings with any of them. But his father thought otherwise. "It wouldn't be a bad thing, perhaps, if Sven tried to pick up the ways of the fishery on the coast here," he said. "And it's true enough he'd hardly get taken on with any other crew." "Joel! How can you talk so!" cried his wife. "Who knows what they've been plotting and planning now, to send for him like that. Some new mischief, I'll be bound." "Why, I only said 'twas a pity Sven shouldn't have a part in the fishery," said Joel, mildly. But Sven remembered his father's words on Christmas Eve, and it came into his mind now that perhaps it was his wish to get him away from home. "You can tell Olaus I'll come," he said to his brother. "And thank him for offering. I'll go over to Fårön myself as soon as I can." "Why not come back with me now?" said Ung-Joel. "Then you can get the things you want at our store. There was a telegram in this morning that the herring are shoaling thick up at Smögen. By to-morrow they'll be getting away all about." There was a hurry of preparation for a while, and then the two brothers set off, leaving Joel and Thala alone. For a week or so they heard no news of Sven, then one Sunday Ung-Joel came out to visit them. Mor Thala was eager to know how matters had gone with Sven and the crew--for all she knew, they might have killed him.