st it when
I was the one to provoke Nipen? Now Rolf is safe, and Erica will be
happy again, and I shall not feel as if everybody's eyes were upon me,
and know that it is only out of kindness that they do not reproach me as
having done all the mischief. I shall hold up my head again now, as
some may think I have done all along: but I did not in my own eyes,--no,
not in my own eyes, for all these weary days that are gone."

"Well, they are gone now," said Rolf. "Let them go by and be
forgotten."

"Nay,--not forgotten," said Peder. "How is my boy to learn if he
forgets--"

"Don't fear that for me, grandfather," said Oddo, as the tears still
streamed down his face. "No fear of that. I shall not forget these
last days,--no, not as long as I live."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.

The comrades who were waiting and watching on the point were duly amazed
to see three heads in the boat on her return; and duly delighted to find
that the third was Rolf,--alive, and no ghost. They asked question upon
question, and Rolf answered some fully and truly, while he showed
reserve upon others; and at last, when closely pressed, he declared
himself too much exhausted to talk, and begged permission to lie down in
the bottom of the boat and sleep. Upon this, a long silence ensued. It
lasted till the farm-house was in sight at which one of the rowers was
to be landed. Oddo then exclaimed, "I wonder what we have all been
thinking about. We have not settled a single thing about what is to be
said and done; and here we are almost in sight of home, and Hund's
cunning eyes."

"I have settled all about it," replied Rolf, raising himself up from the
bottom of the boat, where they all thought he had been sleeping soundly.
"My mind," said he, "is quite clear. The first thing I have decided
upon is that I may rely on the honour of our friends here. You have
proved your kindness, friends, in coming on this expedition, but for
which I should have died in my hole, like a superannuated bear in its
den. This is a story that the whole country will hear of; and our
grandchildren will tell it on winter nights, when there is talk of the
war that brought the pirates on our coasts. Your names will go abroad
with the story, comrades, and, on one condition, with high honour: and
that condition is, that you say not a word beyond the family you live
in, for the next few days, of the adventure of this night, or of your
having seen