you met him then? Ah, poor boy, his is a sad fate! He has
wit enough, but it works wrongly; the brain is there, but 'tis twisted.
Yes, we know Sigurd well enough--his home is with us in default of a
better. Ay, ay! we snatched him from death--perhaps unwisely,--yet he
has a good heart, and finds pleasure in his life."

"He is a kind of poet in his own way," went on Errington, watching
Thelma as she listened intently to their conversation. "Do you know he
actually visited me on board here last night and begged me to go away
from the Altenfjord altogether? He seemed afraid of me, as if he thought
I meant to do him some harm."

"How strange!" murmured Thelma. "Sigurd never speaks to visitors,--he is
too shy. I cannot understand his motive!"

"Ah, my dear!" sighed her father. "Has he any motive at all? . . . and
does he ever understand himself? His fancies change with every shifting
breeze! I will tell you," he continued, addressing himself to Errington,
"how he came to be, as it were, a bit of our home. Just before Thelma
was born, I was walking with my wife one day on the shore, when we both
caught sight of something bumping against our little pier, like a large
box or basket. I managed to get hold of it with a boat-hook and drag it
in; it was a sort of creel such as is used to pack fish in, and in it
was the naked body of a half-drowned child. It was an ugly little
creature--a newly born infant deformity--and on its chest there was a
horrible scar in the shape of a cross, as though it had been gashed
deeply with a pen-knife. I thought it was dead, and was for throwing it
back into the Fjord, but my wife,--a tender-hearted angel--took the poor
wretched little wet body in her arms, and found that it breathed. She
warmed it, dried it, and wrapped it in her shawl,--and after awhile the
tiny monster opened its eyes and stared at her. Well! . . . somehow,
neither of us could forget the look it gave us,--such a solemn, warning,
pitiful, appealing sort of expression! There was no resisting it,--so we
took the foundling and did the best we could for him. We gave him the
name of Sigurd,--and when Thelma was born, the two babies used to play
together all day, and we never noticed anything wrong with the boy,
except his natural deformity, till he was about ten or twelve years old.
Then we saw to our sorrow that the gods had chosen to play havoc with
his wits. However, we humored him tenderly, and he was always
manageable. Poor Si