my wife! the creature before whom my soul knelt in
worship night and day--whose bright head was the sunlight of life! Let
me tell you of her, Sir Philip--'tis a simple story. She was the child
of my dearest friend, and many years younger than myself. This friend of
mine, Erik Erlandsen, was the captain of a stout Norwegian barque,
running constantly between these wild waters and the coast of France. He
fell in love with, and married a blue-eyed beauty from the Sogne Fjord,
he carried her secretly away from her parents, who would not consent to
the marriage. She was a timid creature, in spite of her queenly ways,
and, for fear of her parents, she would never land again on the shores
of Norway. She grew to love France,--and Erik often left her there in
some safe shelter when he was bound on some extra long and stormy
passage. She took to the Catholic creed, too, in France, and learned to
speak the French tongue, so Erik said, as though it were her own. At the
time of the expected birth of her child, her husband had taken her far
inland to Arles, and there business compelled him to leave her for some
days. When he returned she was dead!--laid out for burial, with flowers
and tapers round her. He fell prone on her body insensible,--and not for
many hours did the people of the place dare to tell him that he was the
father of a living child--a girl, with the great blue eyes and white
skin of her mother. He would scarce look at it--but at last, when roused
a bit, he carried the little thing in his arms to the great Convent at
Arles, and, giving the nuns money, he bade them take it and bring it up
as they would, only giving it the name of Thelma. Then poor Erlandsen
came home--he sought me out:--he said, 'Olaf, I feel that I am going on
my last voyage. Promise you will see to my child--guard her, if you can,
from an evil fate! For me there is no future!' I promised, and strove to
cheer him--but he spoke truly--his ship went down in a storm on the Bay
of Biscay, and all on board were lost. Then it was that I commenced my
journeyings to and fro, to see the little maiden that was growing up in
the Convent at Arles. I watched her for sixteen years--and when she
reached her seventeenth birthday, I married her and brought her to
Norway."

"And she was Thelma's mother?" said Errington with interest.

"She was Thelma's mother," returned the _bonde_, "and she was more
beautiful than even Thelma is now. Her education had been almost
ent