hat!"

Olaf Gueldmar laughed again. His suspicious gravity had entirely
disappeared, leaving his face a beaming mirror of beneficence and
good-humor.

"So you _are_ men," he said cheerily, "men in the bud, like leaves on a
tree. But you seem boys to a tough old stump of humanity such as I am.
That is my way,--my child Thelma, though they tell me she is a woman
grown, is always a babe to me. 'Tis one of the many privileges of the
old, to see the world about them always young and full of children."

And he led the way past the wide-open lattice, where they could dimly
perceive the spinning-wheel standing alone, as though thinking deeply of
the fair hands that had lately left it idle, and so round to the actual
front of the house, which was exceedingly picturesque, and literally
overgrown with roses from ground to roof. The entrance door stood
open;--it was surrounded by a wide, deep porch richly carved and
grotesquely ornamented, having two comfortable seats within it, one on
each side. Through this they went, involuntarily brushing down as they
passed, a shower of pink and white rose-leaves, and stepped into a wide
passage, where upon walls of dark, polished pine, hung a large
collection of curiously shaped weapons, all of primitive manufacture,
such as stone darts and rough axes, together with bows and arrows and
two-handled swords, huge as the fabled weapon of William Wallace.

Opening a door to the right the _bonde_ stood courteously aside and bade
them enter, and they found themselves in the very apartment where they
had seen the maiden spinning.

"Sit down, sit down!" said their host hospitably. "We will have wine
directly, and Thelma shall come hither. Thelma! Thelma! Where is the
child? She wanders hither and thither like a mountain sprite. Wait here,
my lads, I shall return directly."

And he strode away, leaving Errington and Lorimer delighted at the
success of their plans, yet somewhat abashed too. There was a peace and
gentle simplicity about the little room in which they were, that touched
the chivalrous sentiment in their natures and kept them silent. On one
side of it, half a dozen broad shelves supported a goodly row of
well-bound volumes, among which the time-honored golden names of
Shakespeare and Scott glittered invitingly, together with such works as
Chapman's Homer, Byron's "Childe Harold," the Poems of John Keats,
Gibbon's Rome, and Plutarch; while mingled with these were the
devotional works