or less, I
should think. No; your business would be to pilot us to Erlingsen's,
and answer truly all our questions about their ways and doings."

"Surprise them in their sleep!" muttered Hund. "Wake them up with the
light of their own burning roofs! And they would know me by that light!
They would point me out to the bishop;--they would find time in their
hurry to mark me for the monster they might well think me."

"Yes; you would be in the front, of course," observed the pirate. "But
there is one comfort for you,--if you are so earnest to see the bishop
as you told me you were, my plan is the best. When once we lock him
down on board our schooner, you can have him all to yourself. You can
confess your sins to him the whole day long; for nobody else will want a
word with either of you. You can show him your enchanted island down in
the fiord, and see if he can lay the ghost for you."

Hund sprang to his feet in an agony of passion. The well-armed pirate
was up as soon as he. Rolf drew back two paces to be out of sight, if
by chance they should look up, and armed himself with a heavy stone. He
heard the pirate say--

"You can try to run away, if you like. I shall shoot you through the
head before you have gone five yards. And you may refuse to return with
me; and then I shall know how to report of you to my captain. I shall
tell him that you are lying at the bottom of this lake--if it has a
bottom--with a stone tied round your neck, like a drowned wild cat. I
hope you may chance to find your enemy there, to make the place the
pleasanter."

Rolf could not resist the impulse to send his heavy stone into the
middle of the tarn, to see the effect upon the men below. He gave a
good cast on the very instant, and prodigious was the splash as the
stone hit the water precisely in the middle of the little lake. The men
did not see the cause of the commotion that followed; but, starting and
turning at the splash, they saw the rings spreading in the dark waters
which had lain as still as the heavens but a moment before. How could
two guilty, superstitious men doubt that the waters were thrown into
agitation by the pirate's last words? Yet they glanced fearfully round
the whole landscape, far and near. They saw no living thing but a hawk,
which, startled from its perch on a scathed pine, was wheeling round in
the air in an unsteady flight. The pirate pointed to the bird with one
hand, while he laid the other