urned to the ruins; but when they got there they
were just in time to see Trullya and her baby flopping over some crags
near the back of the house, which was situated only a little way from
the sea on _both_ sides.

The boys were about to start in pursuit, but Mr. Neeven stopped them.

"Let her go to her own," he said almost gently. And in a few minutes
the seal reached the ocean and was free once more.

[1] "Owzkerry," scoop for baling water.

CHAPTER XXI.

"NOUGHT HAD'ST THOU TO PRAISE."

When Trullya disappeared, the ogre turned upon the boys with a
savageness that was very much put on; for their rueful looks,
disappointment, headlong action, and love of fun, had appealed to him
in a way he was not prepared to combat very seriously. But he was not
going to let them know that. He laid a hand heavily on Tom's shoulder,
and asked, "How came you to know about the seal?"

"I saw her at the window, and I guessed a lot."

Mr. Neeven saw in the four candid faces before him that there was more
to tell.

"How did you find your way into my house, and to that particular
portion of it? Very few persons know about those passages and places."

They were silent. They would not tell on Yaspard, and seeing that his
question remained likely to be unanswered, he asked another.

"Haven't you entered into a Viking campaign, with my young relative
Yaspard Adiesen for your 'enemy,' of all games in the world?"

"Yes," said Tom; "but his uncle was told about it, and our fathers
know."

"Then your fathers are as----" He stopped short, for Harry Mitchell's
eyes were flashing on him in a very spirited manner, and Harry's voice,
raised and determined, interrupted him.

"Excuse me, sir, but I think we must not listen if you go on _that_
tack. Blow us sky high about our _own_ doings. We own up that we
might have made our raid in a more open way, and given you warning that
we meant to attack your castle. _That_ would have been more like
honest Vikings; but, all the same, we aren't going to admit that we've
done anything really wicked, or that our fathers would have permitted
us to carry on so if it had been wrong. And we are ready to take any
punishment you think right to inflict."

"It was only our madram," [1] added Tom, using an old Shetland word,
which Gaun Neeven had heard applied to himself in days gone by more
often than any other term.

"Only _boys' madram_," his gentle mother had so often said to excu