uthority was too much for one man
to have, and they began to make inquiries, and receive complaints of how
he domineered the people.

Next, the magistrates sent him a warning.

"But the right to rule lies in my rudder," thought Bardun to himself.

Then the magistrates summoned him before the tribunal.

Bardun simply whistled contemptuously.

At last matters came to such a pitch that the magistrates sailed forth
to seize him in the midst of a howling tempest, and down they went in
the Finmark seas.

Then Bardun was made chief magistrate, till such time as the king should
send up another.

But the new man who came had not been very long in office there before
it seemed to him as if it was not he but Bardun who held sway.

So the same thing happened over again.

Bardun was summoned in vain before the courts, and the magistrates came
forth to seize him and perished at sea.

But when the next governor was sent up to Finmark, it was only the keel
of the king's ship that came drifting in from the sea. At last nobody
would venture thither to certain ruin, and Bardun was left alone, and
ruled over all. Then so mighty was he in all Finmark that he reigned
there like the king himself.

Now he had but one child, and that a daughter.

Boel was her name, and she shot up so handsome and comely that her
beauty shone like the sun. No bridegroom was good enough for her,
unless, perhaps, it were the king's son.

Wooers came from afar, and came in vain. She was to have a dower, they
said, such as no girl in the North had ever had before.

One year quite a young officer came up thither with a letter from the
king. His garments were stiff with gold, and shone and sparkled wherever
he went. Bardun received him well, and helped him to carry out the
king's commands.

But since the day when he himself was young, and got the answer, "Yes!"
from his bride, he had never been so happy as when Boel came to him one
day and said that the young officer had wooed her, and she would throw
herself into the sea straightway if she couldn't have him.

In this way, he argued, his race would always sit in the seat of
authority, and hold sway when he was gone.

While the officer, in the course of the summer, was out on circuit,
Bardun set a hundred men to work to build a house for them.

It was to shine like a castle, and be bright with high halls and large
reception-rooms, and windows in long rooms; and furs and cloth of gold
and bright t