r that can do no good. Come, my mannie, you and
I are going to wander about in the woods to-day a great long way, and
try to get home; so, let me shake the leaves off you. There now, we
shall start."

"Dat great fun!" cried Snorro, with sparkling eyes; "but, O'af, me want
mik."

"Milk--eh? Well, to be sure, but--"

Olaf stopped abruptly, not only because he was greatly perplexed about
the matter of breakfast thus suggested to him, but because he chanced at
that moment to look towards the leafy entrance of the cave, and there
beheld a pair of large black eyes glaring at him.

To say that poor Olaf's heart gave a violent leap, and then apparently
ceased to beat altogether, while the blood fled from his visage, is not
to say anything disparaging to his courage. Whether you be boy or man,
reader, we suspect that if you had, in similar circumstances, beheld
such a pair of eyes, you might have been troubled with somewhat similar
emotions. Cowardice lies not in the susceptibility of the nervous
system to a shock, but in giving way to that shock so as to become unfit
for proper action or self-defence. If Olaf had been a coward, he would,
forgetting all else, have attempted to fly, or, that being impossible,
would have shrunk into the innermost recesses of the cave. Not being a
coward, his first impulse was to start to his feet and face the pair of
eyes; his second, to put his left arm round Snorro, and, still keeping
his white face steadily turned to the foe, to draw the child close to
his side.

This act, and the direction in which Olaf gazed, caused Snorro to glance
towards the cave's mouth, where he no sooner beheld the apparition, than
shutting his own eyes tight, and opening his mouth wide, he gave vent to
a series of yells that might have terrified the wildest beast in the
forest!

It did not, however, terrify the owner of the eyes, for the bushes were
instantly thrust aside, and next instant Snorro's mouth was violently
stopped by the black hand of a savage.

Seeing this, Olaf's blood returned to its ordinary channels with a rush.
He seized a thick branch that lay on the ground, and dealt the savage a
whack on the bridge of his nose, that changed it almost immediately from
a snub into a superb Roman! For this he received a buffet on the ear
that raised a brilliant constellation in his brain, and laid him flat on
the ground.

Rising with difficulty, he was met with a shower of language from the
savage i