p nearer, and studied them
both with such earnest and searching scrutiny, that as they remembered
the real attraction that had drawn them thither, the conscious blood
mounted to their faces, flushing Errington's forehead to the very roots
of his curly brown hair. Still the old man gazed as though he sought to
read their very souls. He muttered something to himself in Norwegian,
and, finally, to their utter astonishment, he drew his hunting-knife
from its sheath, and with a rapid, wild gesture, threw it on the ground
and placed his foot upon it.

"Be it so!" he said briefly. "I cover the blade! You are men; like men
you speak truth. As such, I receive you! Had you told me a lie
concerning your coming here,--had you made pretense of having lost your
way, or other such shifty evasion, your path would never have again
crossed mine. As it is,--welcome!"

And he held out his hand with a sort of royal dignity, still resting one
foot on the fallen weapon. The young men, struck by his action and
gratified by his change of manner and the genial expression that now
softened his rugged features, were quick to respond to his friendly
greeting, and the _bonde_, picking up and re-sheathing his hunting-knife
as if he had done nothing at all out of the common, motioned them
towards the very window on which their eyes had been so long and so
ardently fixed.

"Come!" he said. "You must drain a cup of wine with me before you leave.
Your unguided footsteps led you by the wrong path,--I saw your boat
moored to my pier, and wondered who had been venturesome enough to
trample through my woodland. I might have guessed that only a couple of
idle boys like yourselves, knowing no better, would have pushed their
way to a spot that all worthy dwellers in Bosekop, and all true
followers of the Lutheran devilry, avoid as though the plague were
settled in it."

And the old man laughed, a splendid, mellow laugh, with the ring of true
jollity in it,--a laugh that was infectious, for Errington and Lorimer
joined in it heartily without precisely knowing why. Lorimer, however,
thought it seemly to protest against the appellation "idle boys."

"What do you take us for, sir?" he said with lazy good-nature. "I carry
upon my shoulders the sorrowful burden of twenty-six years,--Philip,
there, is painfully conscious of being thirty,--may we not therefore
dispute the word 'boys' as being derogatory to our dignity? You called
us 'men' a while ago,--remember t