talk to me and sing! Good-bye, fat man!" he added
suddenly, turning round once more on Dyceworthy. "You will never
overtake the big ship that has gone away with Thelma over the water.
Thelma will come back,--yes! . . . but one day she will go never to come
back." He dropped his voice to a mysterious whisper. "Last night I saw a
little spirit come out of a rose,--he carried a tiny golden hammer and
nail, and a ball of cord like a rolled-up sunbeam. He flew away so
quickly I could not follow him; but I know where he went! He fastened
the nail in the heart of Thelma, deeply, so that the little drops of
blood flowed,--but she felt no pain; and then he tied the golden cord to
the nail and left her, carrying the other end of the string with him--to
whom? Some other heart must be pierced! Whose heart?" Sigurd looked
infinitely cunning as well as melancholy, and sighed deeply.

The Reverend Mr. Dyceworthy was impatient and disgusted.

"It is a pity," he said with an air of solemn patience, "that this
hapless creature, accursed of God and man, is not placed in some proper
abode suitable to the treatment of his affliction. You, Britta, as the
favored servant of a--a--well, let us say, of a peculiar mistress,
should persuade her to send this--this--person away, lest his vagaries
become harmful."

Britta glanced very kindly at Sigurd, who still held her apron with the
air of a trustful child.

"He's no more harmful than you are," she said promptly, in answer to the
minister's remark. "He's a good fellow and if he talks strangely he can
make himself useful,--which is more than can be said of certain people.
He can saw and chop the wood, make hay, feed the cattle, pull a strong
oar, and sweep and keep the garden,--can't you, Sigurd?" She laid her
hand on Sigurd's shoulder, and he nodded his head emphatically, as she
enumerated his different talents. "And as for climbing,--he can guide
you anywhere over the hills, or up the streams to the big waterfalls--no
one better. And if you mean by peculiar,--that my mistress is different
to other people, why, I know she is, and am glad of it,--at any rate,
she's a great deal too kind-hearted to shut this poor boy up in a house
for madmen! He'd die if he couldn't have the fresh air." She paused, out
of breath with her rapid utterance, and Mr. Dyceworthy held up his hands
in dignified astonishment.

"You talk too glibly, young woman," he said. "It is necessary that I
should instruct you wit