. He waited for the young man to
speak, and finding they remained silent, he glanced at them half angrily
and again repeated his words--

"I am the _bonde_,--Olaf Gueldmar. Speak your business and take your
departure; my time is brief!"

Lorimer looked up with his usual nonchalance,--a faint smile playing
about his lips. He saw at once that the old farmer was not a man to be
trifled with, and he raised his cap with a ready grace as he spoke.

"Fact is," he said frankly, "we've no business here at all--not the
least in the world. We are perfectly aware of it! We are trespassers,
and we know it. Pray don't be hard on us, Mr.--Mr. Gueldmar!"

The _bonde_ glanced him over with a quick lightening of the eyes, and
the suspicion of a smile in the depths of his curly beard. He turned to
Errington.

"Is this true? You came here on purpose, knowing the ground was private
property?"

Errington, in his turn, lifted his cap from his clustering brown curls
with that serene and stately court manner which was to him second
nature.

"We did," he confessed, quietly following Lorimer's cue, and seeing also
that it was best to be straightforward. "We heard you spoken of in
Bosekop, and we came to see if you would permit us the honor of your
acquaintance."

The old man struck his pine-staff violently into the ground, and his
face flushed wrathfully.

"Bosekop!" he exclaimed. "Talk to me of a wasp's nest! Bosekop! You
shall hear of me there enough to satisfy your appetite for news.
Bosekop! In the days when my race ruled the land, such people as they
that dwell there would have been put to sharpen my sword on the
grindstone, or to wait, hungry and humble, for the refuse of the food
left from my table!"

He spoke with extraordinary heat and passion,--it was evidently
necessary to soothe him. Lorimer took a covert glance backward over his
shoulder towards the lattice window, and saw that the white figure at
the spinning-wheel had disappeared.

"My dear Mr. Gueldmar," he then said with polite fervor, "I assure you I
think the Bosekop folk by no means deserve to sharpen your sword on the
grindstone, or to enjoy the remains of your dinner! Myself, I despise
them! My friend here, Sir Philip Errington, despises them--don't you,
Phil?"

Errington nodded demurely.

"What my friend said just now is perfectly true," continued Lorimer. "We
desire the honor of your acquaintance,--it will charm and delight us
above all things!"

And h