"Yes, see Miss Mary, you are a perfect man!" flatteringly said the preacher, getting the chance of sowing a little seed of variance as he believed.
"A sitting crow gets nothing," joked the custom house surveyor.
"One who lies on his sofa, he means," whispered the assistant to Miss Mary.
The girl swelled at the praise, and distributed the fish with full hands to those who stood on the pier, who never tired of breaking forth in praise and blessings over the angel rescuer.
But it was not gratitude for benevolence received, which called forth this beautiful emotion, it was a hearty desire to evade confessing themselves wrong towards the commissioner, whose way of fishing they had joked about. It was the reverse side of a hatred towards their real benefactor, for whom they would not bow in gratitude.
When the fish was taken from the nets and distributed between the poorest, there proved to be ten barrels, which were at once bought by the provision dealer and salted down. The money was transferred at once into coffee, sugar and beer. For they felt sure they could take their own stromling for the winter out of the sea, since Miss Mary had given them all the information regarding the new way of fishing with drifting nets.
When the commissioner reached his room, he found a letter, which had been brought by a coast guardsman returning home. It contained an invitation for the commissioner and his betrothed to honor the ball of the officers on board the corvette Loke, which would anchor beside the skerry at eight o'clock of the same day.
He saw at once that the moment had come in which to make an end to the engagement, for now to take the mistress of another into society and introduce her as his future wife, naturally he would not. Therefore he pulled off his engagement ring, and put it in a letter, which he had composed the night before to the widow of the exchequer officer, and in which he with the strongest expressions of despair regretted that his engagement with Miss Mary must come to an end, because of a former liaison, which he had recklessly entered into with a woman, who had borne him children, and who now appeared with a lawful claim which, if it could not compel him into a marriage with the plaintiff, still had the power to prevent his union with another. As a gentleman, but without intending to offend, he explained that he was prepared to assist the innocently injured girl who was perhaps placed in distress, both as far as the saving of her honor and her subsistence were concerned.
This fiction he had found to be the only possible way to make a final ending, as it protected the honor of both parties, but mostly that of the girl, and must be irrevocable without the hope of reparation, being an inevitable fate.
When he had sealed the letter, he whistled to his orderly, and gave it to him telling him to carry it to the widow of the officer of the exchequer.