She felt perfectly convinced that Svensen had made away with
his master's body by some mysterious rite connected with pagan
belief,--she knew that Gueldmar himself, according to rumor, had buried
his own wife in some unknown spot, with strange and weird ceremonials,
but she was inclined to be tolerant,--and glancing at Svensen's grave,
pained face from time to time as she sat beside him in the sledge, she
resolved to ask him no more questions on the subject, but to accept and
support, if necessary, the theory he had so emphatically set
forth,--namely, the mystical evanishment of the corpse by some
supernatural agency.

As they neared their destination, she began to think of Thelma, the
beautiful, proud girl whom she remembered best as standing on a little
green-tufted hillock with a cluster of pansies in her hand, and
Sigurd--Sigurd clinging fondly to her white skirts, with a wealth of
passionate devotion in his upturned, melancholy, blue eyes. Ulrika had
seen her but once since then,--and that was on the occasion when, at the
threat of Lovisa Elsland, and the command of the Reverend Mr.
Dyceworthy, she had given her Sir Philip Errington's card, with the
false message written on it that had decoyed her for a time into the
wily minister's power. She felt a thrill of shame as she remembered the
part she had played in that cruel trick,--and reverting once more to the
memory of Sigurd, whose tragic end at the Fall of Njedegorze she had
learned through Valdemar, she resolved to make amends now that she had
the chance, and to do her best for Thelma in her suffering and trouble.

"For who knows," mused Ulrika, "Whether it is not the Lord's hand that
is extended towards me,--and that in the ministering to the wants of her
whom I wronged, and whom my son so greatly loved, I may not thereby
cancel the past sin, and work out my own redemption!"

And her dull eyes brightened with hope, and her heart warmed,--she began
to feel almost humane and sympathetic,--and was so eager to commence her
office of nurse and consoler to Thelma that she jumped out of the sledge
almost before it had stopped at the farm gate. Disregarding Valdemar's
assistance, she clambered sturdily over the drifted heaps of slippery
snow that blocked the deserted pathways, and made for the
house,--Valdemar following her as soon as he had safely fastened up the
sledge, which was not his own, he having in emergency borrowed it from a
neighbor. As they approached, a