The king's ring

by Zacharias Topelius

III.—FIRE AND WATER.

Six weeks passed before the surgeon and his circle of listeners gathered again. During that time an accident had happened to old Bäck. Most of us in this world possess hobbies, and old bachelors in particular. Bäck had got it into his mind that he ought to have a certain comfort in his old age; he had in his garret a good-sized sack of feathers, which he increased in spring and autumn by bird-shooting. To what use these feathers were to be put no one knew; when he was asked about it, he said:

"I will do like Possen at the 'Wiborg explosion'; if Finland is in need, I will go up some tower and shake my feathers into the air, then there will be as many soldiers as the sack has feathers."

"You talk like a goose, my brother," replied Captain Svanholm, the postmaster. "In our days one must have different stuff to make soldiers of. By my soul, I think you consider us warriors like chickens!"

"Yes," added the surgeon, when the captain was about to continue, "I know what you wish to say: exactly like Fieandt at Karstula."

However, the fact was, that the surgeon had one fine April day gone to the sea-shore on a shooting expedition, with artificial decoy ducks. He was accompanied by an old one-eyed corporal called Ritsi (Finnish for Fritz), who had been a pedlar in his youth, and wandered over Germany with a pack on his back; but he brought home nothing except a change in his name.

The ice still remained in patches, with gaps between; both the old men strolled along the edge, and discharged a shot every now and then; but it amounted to very little, as both of them had rather poor eyesight. It happened early one morning that Bäck thought he saw a pair of fine ducks at the further end of the ice, which could only be reached by making a long circuit. He set off, and sure enough the ducks were there. He crept as near as he dared, aimed, and fired ... the ducks' feathers were slightly agitated, but they did not stir from the spot. "Those creatures are pretty tough," thought Bäck; he reloaded, and fired again at thirty paces. The same result followed. Much astonished, Bäck went nearer, and discovered for the first time that he had been shooting at his own decoy ducks, which the wind had imperceptibly driven from the inner to the outer edge of the ice.

The old gentleman now thought about returning; but this was easier said than done. The wind had separated the ice on which he stood, from the ice which held Ritsi, and the loose block was drifting out to sea. The two old friends looked sadly at each other; scarcely a dozen yards separated them, and yet the corporal could not assist his companion, for there was no boat. Bäck was drifting slowly and steadily out to sea.

"Good-bye, now, comrade," cried the surgeon, whilst still within hearing. "Tell Svenonius and Svanholm that my will is locked up in the bureau-drawer to the right. Tell them to have the bells rung for me next Sunday. As for the funeral, you need not give yourself any trouble; I will attend to that myself."

"God have mercy!" yelled the corporal, putting the wrong side of his jacket to his eyes, and returning to the shore slowly and tranquilly, as if nothing had happened.

For the honour of the good town, it must be said, that the rest of the surgeon's friends were far from taking the matter like the corporal. The postmaster cursed and swore; the schoolmaster marched out at the head of his boys; and the old grandmother quietly sent off a couple of able-bodied pilots in their boats to cruise between the blocks of ice. The greatest excitement prevailed; confusion and running about everywhere; and those who made the most fuss accomplished the least.

Two days passed without any trace of the surgeon; on the third the pilots came back from a fruitless search. All gave the surgeon up for lost. There was sincere mourning in the town for such an old institution as Bäck—everyone's friend, and everybody's confidant—he was one of the little town's house-spirits, without whom the community could not get on. But what could be done? When the third Sunday arrived, without any news of the unfortunate bird-hunter, the bells were rung for his soul, according to custom, and a fine eulogy composed by Svenonius, was read in the church, and the city magistrate appointed a day in the ensuing week for taking an inventory of his effects.

I hope, however, that the reader, who has noticed the title of this veracious story, will not be alarmed. In reality it would be very hard if the surgeon should be called away just now, when Regina sits imprisoned at Korsholm, under Fru Marta's stern control, and Bertel lies bleeding on the battlefield of Lützen. And what would become of the gentle Meri, of the peasant king of Storkyro, and of so many other important personages in this narrative? Patience! the surgeon had certainly gone through worse experiences in his day ... he had not been born for nothing on the same day as Napoleon!

Everything was arranged to take the inventory. Astonishing order prevailed in Bäck's garret; something unusual had happened there; the place was swept and cleaned. All his things were set out: medicine chest dusted, stuffed birds placed in a row, the collection of eggs exposed to view. The silver-headed Spanish cane stood in a corner; the old peruke hung with a melancholy look on its hook; the innermost mysteries of Bäck's bureau, the pale locks of hair from former days, were drawn forth to be valued in roubles and kopeks; probably not at high amounts. An alderman, with an official air, had taken his place at the old oak table, where a large sheet of official paper now occupied the space usually reserved for the surgeon's carpenter's tools; a clerk was sharpening his pencil opposite the alderman, and the old grandmother as hostess, had presented herself with moist eyes to deliver up Bäck's property, as the old man had no relations. One thing, however, was still unopened: it was the old seal-skin trunk under the surgeon's bed. The official's eyes occasionally wandered there with a pious thought of the profit to be derived from the inheritance; but no one knew what the trunk contained, and who was the rightful and legal heir.

It was time to begin. Svanholm and Svenonius were called as appraisers. The alderman coughed once or twice, assumed a judicial air, and then said:

"Whereas it has come to the knowledge of the worthy magistrate that the deceased surgeon of the High Crown, Andreas Bäck, met his death on the ice whilst engaged in bird-shooting; and although not found in body, is in soul, rightfully and lawfully killed..."

"I would most humbly beg to contradict that!" suddenly interrupted a voice from the door.

The effect was truly marvellous.

The magistrate lost both his wits and official bearing; he turned his eyes upwards, and his eloquent tongue for the first time refused its office. The secretary sprang up like a rocket, and knocked over the learned Svenonius, who, being somewhat deaf, had not heard the cause of the sudden commotion. The brave Svanholm was in a terrible plight; one could have sworn that not even at Karstula had he gone through such an ordeal. He looked as white as a ghost, and tried in vain to compel his left foot to advance. The old grandmother was the only one who showed self-possession; she put on her spectacles, went straight to the new-comer, and shook her ancient head dubiously, as if to say that it was very wrong of corpses to come to life again.

But old Bäck—for who else could it be?—was not at all daunted. His feelings had quite a different character. When he beheld his dear old garret so altered, his precious effects on show, and the magistrate in full activity with what Bäck thought none of his business, he was seized, excusably enough, with righteous anger, and took the myrmidons of the law by the neck, one after the other, and threw them without ceremony from the room. Then came the turn of brother Svenonius, who was not spared, and finally Svanholm, before he could utter a word, found himself rolling headlong down the stairs. All this happened in the twinkling of an eye. Only the grandmother remained. When Bäck met her mild, reproachful glance, he was ashamed, and came to his senses.

"Well, well," said he, "you must not take it ill, cousin; I shall teach brooms and dusters to disorder my room ... be so kind as to take a seat. It would provoke a stone to see such actions. See how these wretches have scrubbed my room and dusted my birds. It is a positive crime!"

"Dear cousin," said the grandmother, at once vexed and delighted, "I am the one to be blamed; we thought you must be drowned."

"Drowned, indeed!" muttered the surgeon. "I tell you, cousin, that poor powder isn't so easily got rid of. It is true that I floated around on that miserable ice-floe for three whole days and nights. It wasn't exactly a warm bed and spread table, but it served. I shot a venturesome seal. It was pretty oily, I assure you, but 'better that than nothing.' I had a tinder-box and salt, too; so I made a fire of my game bag, and fried a steak. On the fourth day I drifted to firm ice at West Bothnia, and marched ashore. 'Now it's time to go home,' I thought. Said and done; I sold my gun and hired a team. And I tell you what, cousin, they would have been spared from upsetting my room, and sticking their noses into my affairs, had not the Swedes quadrupled the rate, compared with old times. My purse was empty before I came to Haparanda. Then I thought, 'let the Medical College go to the dogs!' and began my old practice with the lancet and 'essentia dulcis,' as I went along; and all the old women—God bless you, I thought you were going to sneeze—and all the old women were amazed to see former times revived. In this manner I was able to reach home—a little too late, but still in time to throw out my uninvited guests."

The surgeon had great difficulty in pardoning his friends for their invasion of his peaceful kingdom. Had they taken his treasures, or slandered his good name, he could have forgiven them, but to put his room in order was more than he could stand! Little by little, however, the storm was allayed through the old grandmother's wise diplomacy; and so the day came when the reconciliation was celebrated with a third tale. It is true that some plain people still looked upon the surgeon as a ghost; the magistrate doubted his right to live when he had been legally declared dead; the postmaster swore over his sore back, which still bore the marks of the meeting with brother Bäck; Svenonius sighed over a hole in his twenty-year-old black coat, which he had worn in honour of the solemn occasion. But the old grandmother smiled as usual; Anne Sophie was friendly as ever; the little folks were as noisy; and—thus it happened that the sunshine scattered the morning mists, and the horizon was cleared for the captive Regina.

* * * * *

"My dear friends," began the surgeon, "it may puzzle you why I call this story 'Fire and Water.' You understand The King's Ring, and how The Sword and the Plough came into conflict. Perhaps you think that I shall now treat you to natural history. That would be well and good. But I entertain the opinion that in a story, humanity is the great thing. If we look at pictures, we heartily admire a fruit or a game painting, but I believe figure-painting, with fine human forms, is nevertheless superior. Therefore I do not intend to describe conflagrations and deluges, but have chosen my title from the fact that human temperaments correspond to the elements—some to fire, some to air, others to water and earth. I intend to tell you about four persons: two of whom possessed a fiery nature, and two a watery. All is not said that could be said, for most titles have the fault of only giving one aspect of many. I thought of calling this part 'The Coat of Arms,' when I realised that it might also be called 'The Axe.' I might have alarmed you with the terrible title of 'The Curse'; but when I came to think it over, I found that it could just as well be styled 'The Blessing.' Therefore you will have to be contented with the elements; I have now said all I wished, and I will leave you to guess the rest."

CHAPTER I.
THE TREASURE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD.

The first thing to be borne in mind is, that the story of the Sword and the Plough happened before the Battle of Lützen. On now going back to that combat, on the 6th of November, 1632, we may forget for a time that the "Sword and the Plough" ever existed, and imagine that we still stand by the great hero's dead body, as it lay embalmed in the village of Meuchen.

It was a fine but terrible spectacle when the Pappenheimers charged the Finns on the east of the River Rippach. These splendid cuirassiers rushed upon Stälhandske; the tired Finns and their horses reeled and gave way before this terrific onslaught. But Stälhandske rallied them again, man to man, horse to horse; they fought to the death; and friends and foes were mixed together in one bleeding, confused mass. Here fell Pappenheim and his bravest men; half of the Finnish cavalry were trampled under the horses' hoofs, and yet the battle raged till nightfall.

Bertel rode at Stalhandske's side, and here he encountered Pappenheim. The youth of twenty could not cope with this arm of steel; the brave general struck Bertel on the helmet with such tremendous force, that he reeled and became unconscious. But in falling he mechanically grasped his horse by the mane, and the faithful Lapp galloped away, dragging his master with one foot in the stirrup.

When Bertel opened his eyes he was in utter darkness. He vaguely remembered the last incident of the combat, and Pappenheim's uplifted sword. He thought he was now dead, and lay in his grave. He then put his hand to his heart; it was beating: he bit his finger; it hurt him. He realised that he was still in existence, but how and where it was impossible to guess. He reached out his hand and picked up some straw. He felt the damp ground under him, and the empty space above. He tried to raise himself up, but his head was too heavy. It still suffered from the blow of Pappenheim's sword.

Then he heard a voice not far from him, half-complaining, half-mocking, saying in Swedish:

"Saints and fiends! Not a drop of wine! Those rascally Wallachians have grabbed my flask; the miserable hen-thieves! Hollo, Turk, or Jew—it is all one—here with a drop of wine!"

"Is it you, Larsson?" said Bertel in a faint voice, for his tongue was also parched with a burning thirst.

"What sort of a marmot is it whispering my name?" replied the voice in the darkness. "Hurrah, boys, loose reins and a smart gallop! Fire your pistols, fling them to the devil, and slash away with swords! Cleave their skulls; peel them like turnips! Grind them to powder! The king has fallen ... Devils and heroism, what a king! ... to-day we bleed. To-day we shall die, but first revenge. That's the way, boys, hurrah ... pitch in, East Bothnians!"

"Larsson," repeated Bertel; but his comrade did not heed him. He continued in his delirium to lead his Finns to the combat.

After a time a ray of the late autumn morning shone through the window of the miserable hut upon Bertel. He could now distinguish the straw upon the bare ground, and two men asleep.

Then the door opened, and a couple of uncouth, bearded men entered, and thrust roughly at the sleepers with the butts of their muskets.

"Raus!" they cried in Low German; "it is the signal to start!"

And outside the hut was heard the well-known trumpet-blast, which at that time was the usual signal for breaking up the camp.

"May they spear me like a frog," said one of the men in a bad humour, "if I can guess what the reverend father wishes to do with these heretic dogs. He should have given them a passport to the arch-fiend, their lord and master."

"Fool!" replied the other; "do you not know that the heretic king's death is going to be celebrated with a great festival at Ingolstadt? The reverend father intends to hold a grand auto-de-fé in honour of the happy event."

The two sleepers now stood up half-awake, and Bertel could recognise by the faint morning light the little, thick-set Larsson and his own faithful Pekka. But there was no opportunity for explanations. All three were brought out, bound, and put into a cart, and then the long caravan, composed of wagons for the wounded and baggage, under the charge of the Croats, began slowly to move.

Bertel knew that he and his companions were now prisoners of the Imperialists. He soon recovered his memory, and learned from his countrymen in captivity how it all happened. When the faithful Lapp felt the reins loose, he galloped with his unconscious master back to camp. But this was being plundered by the wild Croats, and when they saw a Swedish officer dragged along half dead by his horse, they took him prisoner, in the hope of a good ransom. Pekka, who would not forsake his master, was also taken prisoner. Larsson, on the other hand, had, at the Pappenheimers' attack, charged too far amongst the enemy, and having received a sabre thrust in the shoulder, and a wound in the arm, was unable to extricate himself. Who had triumphed Larsson did not know with certainty.

It was now the third day after the battle; they had marched for a day and night in a southerly direction, and then stopped for a few hours in a deserted village.

"Accursed crew!" exclaimed the little captain, whose jovial disposition did not abandon him under any circumstances; "if they had not stolen my flask, we might now drink Finland's health together. But these Croats are thieves of the first water, compared with whom our gipsies at home are innocent angels. I should like to hang a couple of hundred of them from the ramparts of Korsholm, as they hang petticoats on the walls of a Finnish garret."

The march continued with brief halts for several days, not without great suffering and discomfort to the wounded, who, improperly bandaged, were prevented by their fetters from helping each other. At the outset they travelled through a desolated country, where provisions were obtained with great difficulty, and whose population took to flight at the sight of the dreaded Croats. But they soon arrived in richer parts, where the Catholic inhabitants assembled to curse the heretics, and exult over their king's fall. The whole Catholic world shared this rejoicing. It is stated that in Madrid brilliant performances took place, in which Gustave Adolf, another dragon, was conquered by Wallenstein as St. George.

After seven days' wearisome journeying, the cart with the captive Finns drove late one evening over a clattering drawbridge, and stopped in a small courtyard. The wounded prisoners were led out, and conducted up two crumbling flights of stairs into a turret room in the form of a semi-circle. It seemed to Bertel as if he had seen this place before, but darkness and fatigue prevented him from making sure. The stars shone through the grated windows, and the prisoners were revived with a cup of wine. Larsson said with satisfaction:

"I will bet anything that the thieves have stolen their wine from our cellars, while we lay in Würzburg, for better stuff I have never tasted!"

"Würzburg!" said Bertel thoughtfully. "Regina!" added he, almost unconsciously.

"And the wine-cellar!" sighed Larsson, mocking him. "I will tell you something.

'The greatest fool upon the earth
Is he that believes in a girl's worth.
When love comes, the little dear,
Marry instead the cup of good cheer.'

"The black-eyed young Regina now sits and knits stockings at Korsholm. Yes, yes, Fru Marta is not one of the folks who sit and weep in the moonlight. Since we last met I have had news from Vasa through the jolly sergeant, Bengt Kristerson. He said he had fought with your father. You had better believe that the old man is a trump; he carried Bengt out at arm's-length and threw him down the steps there at your home in Storkyro. Bengt cursed and swore, declaring that he would put the old man and twelve of his hands into the windmill at once, and grind them to groats; but Meri begged for them. Smart fellow, Bengt Kristerson! fights like a dragon, and lies like a skipper. Your health!"

"What else did you hear from East Bothnia?" inquired Bertel, who with the bashfulness of youth, blushed at the thought of revealing to his prosaic friend the secret of his heart—his love for the dark-eyed and unhappy Lady Regina von Emmeritz.

"Not much, except the bad harvests, immense drain caused by the war, and heavy conscriptions. The old men on the farm, your father and mine, quarrel as usual, and make it up again. Meri pines for you and sings doleful songs. Do you remember that splendid girl, Katri? round as a turnip, red as mountain-ash berries, and soft about the chin as a lump of butter. She has run away with a soldier. Your health, my boy!"

"Nothing more?" said Bertel abstractedly.

"Nothing more! What the devil do you want to know, when you don't care for the prettiest girl in the whole of Storkyro. 'Yes, noch etivas,' says the German. There has been a great affray at Korsholm. The conscripts got it into their heads that Lady Regina had tried to kill the king with 'witch-shots,' and then they stormed Korsholm, and burned the girl alive. Cursedly jolly! here's to the heretics! We also know the art of holding autos-da-fé."

Bertel started up, forgetting his wounds; but pain mastered him. Without a cry he sank fainting into Larsson's arms.

The honest captain was both troubled and angry. While he bathed Bertel's temples with the remainder of the noble fluid in the tankard, and presently brought him to life once more, he gave vent to his feelings in the following manner, crescendo from piano to forte.

"There, there, Bertel ... what next? What the deuce, boy? Are you in love with the girl? Faint like a lady's maid! Courage! did I say that they had burned her? No, my lad, she was only a little scorched, according to what Bengt Kristerson says, and afterwards she tore Fru Marta's eyes out, and climbed like a squirrel to the top of the castle. Such things happen every day in war ... Well, I declare, you have got both your eyes open at last. You are still alive, you milk-baked wheat loaf ... are you not ashamed to behave like a poltroon? You are a pretty soldier! blitz-donnerwetter-kreutz-Pappenheim, you are a pomade pot! D—n it, now the tankard is empty also!"

The stout little warrior would perhaps have continued to vent his bad humour for some time longer, especially as there was no consolation now left in the cup, had not the door opened, and a female figure then stepped over the threshold. At this sight the captain's pale and fluffy face brightened up. Bertel was laid aside, and Larsson leaned eagerly forward, in order to see better, for the light of the single lamp was very faint. But the result of his observation did not seem very satisfactory.

"A nun! Ah, by Heaven ... to convert us!"

"Peace be with you," said a youthful voice from underneath the veil. "I am sent here by the worthy prioress of the cloister of 'Our Lady' to bind your wounds, and heal them, if it is the will of the saints."

"Upon my honour, charming friend, I am much obliged; let us become better acquainted," said the captain, as he stretched out his hand to lift the nun's veil. In a flash the latter retreated, and two soldiers appeared at the door.

"The devil!" exclaimed Larsson, startled, "What proud nuns they have here! When I was at Würzburg, I used to get a dozen kisses a day from the young sisters at the convent; such sins always obtain absolution. Well," he continued, seeing the nun still hesitating at the door, "your venerableness must not take offence at a soldier's freedom of speech; an honest soldier is a born gallant. Although an unbelieving heretic, I can talk Latin like a monk. When we stayed at Munich I was very intimate with a plump Bavarian nun, twenty-seven years old, with brown eyes and a Roman nose."

"Hold your tongue!" impatiently whispered Bertel, "you will drive the nun away."

"I haven't said a word. Walk in; don't be frightened. I will bet it is a long time since you saw twenty-seven. Posito, says the Frenchman, that your venerableness is an old woman."

The nun returned in silence, with two others, and examined Bertel's wounded head. A delicate white hand drew out some scissors and cut his hair off on each side of the wound. In a short time Bertel's wound was dressed by an experienced hand. Bertel, touched by this compassion, kissed the nun's hand.

"Upon my honour, charming matron," cried the voluble captain, "I am jealous of my friend, who is fifteen years younger than I. Deign to stretch out your gentle hand and plaster this brave arm, which has conquered so many pious sisters' pity..."

The silent nun began to undo the bandages which covered Larsson's wounds. Her hand touched his.

"Potz donnerwetter!" burst out the captain in surprise. "What a fine and soft little hand! I beg your pardon, amiable Fru doctoress; ex ungua leonem, says one of the fathers of the church ... that is to say in good Swedish: by the paw one knows the lion. I will wager ten bottles of old Rhine against a cast-off stirrup, that this little white hand would much rather caress a knight's cheek than finger rosaries night and day."

The nun drew her hand away. The gallant captain feared the consequences of his gallantry.

"I will say no more; I am silent as a karthäuser monk. But I will say that this hand is not an old woman's ... well, well, your lovely venerableness hears that I keep silent."

"Tempus est consummatum, itur in missam," said a solemn voice at the door, and the nun hastened her task. In a few moments the prisoners were again alone.

"I have heard that voice before," said Bertel thoughtfully. "We are surrounded by mysteries."

"Bah!" replied the captain, "it was a mangy and jealous monk. Bless me, what a dear little hand!"

CHAPTER II.
TWO OLD ACQUAINTANCES.

When the autumn sun on the following morning spread its first rays into the turret room, Bertel arose and looked out of the iron-barred window. It was a beautiful view that here met his eye. Underneath the turret wound a lovely river, and on the other side of it lay a town with thirty spires, and beyond were seen a number of still verdant vineyards.

Bertel at once recognised Würzburg. The castle of Marienburg, where the prisoners were confined, had at the retreat of the Swedes fallen back into the bishop's hands; but his grace, on account of the insecurity of the times, did not return there himself, but remained in Vienna. The castle had suffered much, from the last conquest, and the consequent plundering; one tower had been destroyed, and the moat was filled up in several places. At present there were only fifty men in the garrison, guarding the sisters of charity from the cloisters in the town, and many sick and wounded.

When Bertel had carefully examined his prison, he thought he recognised Regina's room, the same in which that beautiful young lady with her maids in waiting had watched the battle, and where the image of the Holy Virgin had been broken into fragments by the splinters from the cannon-shot.*

* The surgeon forgets that this room was totally destroyed.—Author.

"Here," thought the dreaming young man, "she slept the last night before the storm."

For Bertel this room was sacred; when he pressed his lips against the cold walls, he thought he kissed the marks of Regina's tears.

A wonderful thought struck him like lightning. If the nun that visited them yesterday was a princess ... if the white hand belonged to Regina! It would be a miracle, but ... love believes in miracles. Bertel's heart beat fast.

His neglected wounds had greatly improved under the gentle hands of his nurse. He now felt much stronger. His unfortunate comrades were still asleep after their terrible journey. Then the door was quietly opened, and the nun softly entered with a drink for the wounded prisoners. Bertel felt his head swim. Overcome by his violent emotions, he fell on his knees before her.

"Your name, you kind angel, who remembers the prisoners!" he cried. "Tell me your name, let me see your face ... Ah! I should have known you amongst thousands ... you are Regina, yourself!"

"You make a mistake," said the same kind voice that Bertel had heard the day before. It was not Regina's voice, and still he knew the tones. To whom then did it belong?

Bertel rushed forward and pulled the veil from the nun's head. In front of him stood the beautiful mild Ketchen with a smiling face. The surprised Bertel drew back.

"Imprudent one," she said, covering her face with her hands. "I wished to have you in my care, but now you make me leave the place to another."

Ketchen disappeared. On the evening of the same day another nun entered the room.

Larsson addressed a long speech to her, and put her hand to his lips, and impressed on it a loud kiss. He then swore fearfully.

"Millions of devils!" he said, "that I should kiss an old shrivelled hand like that. The skin was like a century-old parchment."

"Verily, my dear Bertel," continued the chagrined captain with philosophical resignation, "there are secrets in nature which will for ever remain concealed from human sagacity. This hand, for example—manus mana, manum—hand, as the old Roman used to say: this hand, my friend, would undoubtedly occupy a shining place in the Greek poet Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' which we formerly studied in the Cathedral School at Abo, the time my father wanted to make me a priest. Yesterday I could have sworn that it was the beautiful white hand of a young girl, and to-day I will be shaved as bare as a monk it it was not a hand that belongs to a seventy-year-old washerwoman. Sic unde ubi apud unquam post, as the ancients used to say. That is, so can a pretty girl be changed into a witch before anyone knows it."

The prisoners' wounds healed rapidly under the care of the nuns. The fierce autumn storms whistled around the castle turrets, and the heavy rain beat against the small panes. The verdure of the vineyards faded, and a thick, heavy mist rose from the Main, and obscured the view of the town.

"I cannot stand it any longer," growled Larsson. "The wretches! they do not give us either wine or dice. And forgive me, Saint, the devil may kiss their hands or lips, not I. No. I have a great respect for old women. I cannot stand this. I will jump out of the window."

"Do it," said Bertel, provoked.

"No, I will not jump out of the window," said the captain. "No, my dear friend—micus ameus, as we learned people used to express ourselves—I will instead honour our companion with a game."

And the inventive captain for the thirtieth time summoned Pekka to a game of pitch and toss. This uninteresting game, which was his only diversion, was played with a Carl IX. six-öre piece.

"Tell me what they are building over there on the square of Würzburg, just opposite the bank of the Main?" said Bertel.

"An ale-house," said Larsson. "Crown!"

"It looks to me like a pyre."

"Tail!" repeated Larsson monotonously. "Dash it, what ill luck I have; this damned Limingo peasant will win my horse, my saddle, and my stirrups."

"The first morning after we were taken prisoners, I heard something about an auto-de-fé, to celebrate the battle of Lützen. What do you think of it?"

"I? What should I care; they might burn a dozen witches for our amusement."

"But if we are concerned in it? If they are waiting for the bishop's arrival?"

Larsson dilated his small grey eyes, and took hold of his goatee.

"Blitz-donner-kreutz ... the wretched Jesuits! They would cook us like turnips ... we ... the conquerors of the Holy Roman Empire ... I mean, my friend Bertel, that in such desperate straits, an honest soldier would not be to blame if he tried to escape in silence—for example, through the window..."

"There is a fall of seventy feet to the Main underneath."

"The door," said the thoughtful captain.

"Is guarded night and day by two armed men."

The captain fell into some melancholy reflections. Time passed on; it was evening; it became night. The nun with their suppers did not appear.

"The festival begins with a fast," muttered the captain in a gloomy tone. "I am shaped like a fish, if I do not wring the head off our neglectful nun as soon as she appears."

At this moment the door opened, and the nun entered alone. Larsson exchanged a glance with his companions, suddenly approached the nun, caught her round the neck, and held her against the wall.

"Be still, like a good child, highly honoured abbess," mockingly said the captain; "if you make a sound you are lost. By right I ought to throw you out of the window and let you have a swim in the Main, to teach you punctum preciosum, that is, a precise punctuality in your attendance. But I will give you grace for this night. Tell me, you most miserable of meal bringers, what is the meaning of that fire which they are preparing on the square; who is going to be roasted there?"

"For the sake of all the saints, speak low," whispered the nun. "I am Ketchen, and have come to save you. A great danger threatens you. To-morrow the bishop is expected, and Father Hieronymus, the implacable enemy of all the Finns, has sworn to burn you alive for the glory of the saints."

"My fine little soft hand!" cried Larsson delighted. "Upon my honour, I am a fool not to recognise it at once. Well, my beautiful friend, for the glory or St. Brita I will take a kiss on the spot..."

The captain kept his word. But Ketchen freed herself, and said quickly:

"If you do not behave yourself, young man, you will afford fuel for the flames. Hurry! bind me to the bedpost, and tie a handkerchief over my mouth.

"Bind you..." replied the captain; "explain yourself."

"Make haste! the guard are drunk and asleep, but in twenty minutes they will be inspected by the pater himself. Seize their cloaks and hurry to get out. The passwords are Petrus and Paulus."

"And yourself?" said the captain.

"They will find me bound. I have been overpowered, and my mouth stopped."

"Noble girl! The crown of all Franconia's sisters of charity; had I not sworn never to marry.... Very well, hasten, Bertel! hurry, Pekka, you lazy dog! Farewell, little rogue! another kiss ... Good-bye!"

The three prisoners hastened out. But scarcely were they outside the door when they were seized by iron fists, thrown down, and bound.

"Take the dogs down into the treasury," said a well-known voice. It was Father Hieronymus.

CHAPTER III.
THE TREASURY.

Bound hand and foot, the prisoners soon found themselves in the deep, dark, damp vault, blasted out of the rock, where the Bishop of Würzburg had kept his treasures before the Swedes delivered him from the trouble. No ray of light penetrated the gloom, and the moisture from the rocks trickled through the crevices and dropped steadily on the ground.

"Lightning and Croats! may all the devils take you, cursed earless monk!" bawled the captain, as soon as he felt firm ground beneath him. "To shut up officers of his Royal Highness and the Crown in this rat-trap. Diabolus infernalis multum plus plurimum! ... Are you alive, Bertel?"

"Yes. In order to be burned living to-morrow."

"Do you believe that, Bertel?" asked the captain in a lugubrious tone.

"I know this treasury. On three sides is the solid rock, on the other a door of iron, and the man who guards us here is harder than either rock or metal. We shall never see Finland again! Never shall I see her more..."

"Listen to me, Bertel; you are a smart chap, but that does not prevent you from talking like a milksop occasionally. You are in love with the black-eyed lady; well, well, I will say nothing about that; love is a bandit, as Ovidius so truly says. But I cannot stand whimpering. If we live, there are other girls to kiss; if we die, then good-bye to them all. So you really fancy that they intend to roast us like picked woodcocks?"

"That entirely depends upon you yourselves," answered a voice in the darkness. All three prisoners started from fright.

"The evil one is here in the midst of us!" exclaimed Larsson.

Pekka began to say his prayers. Then a clear ray from a dark lantern shot through the darkness, and they all saw the Jesuit Hieronymus standing alone near them.

"It depends upon you," he repeated. "To escape is impossible. Your king is dead; your army defeated; the whole world acknowledges the power of the Church and the Emperor. The pile is ready, and your bodies shall burn in honour of the saints. But the holy Church in its clemency wishes to save you, and has sent me here to offer you mercy."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Larsson mockingly. "Come, worthy father, loosen my bonds and let me embrace you. I offer you my friendship, and of course you believe me. How, says Seneca, homo homini lupus, we wolves are all brothers."

"I offer you mercy," continued the Jesuit coldly, "on three conditions, which you will certainly accept. The first is, that you abjure your heretic faith and publicly join the only saving Church."

"Never!" exclaimed Bertel hastily.

"Be quiet!" said the captain. "Well, posito that we abjure the Lutheran faith?"

"Then," continued the Jesuit, "as prisoners of war you shall be exchanged for the high-born Lady and Princess Regina von Emmeritz, whom your king tyrannically sent a prisoner to the north."

"It shall be done!" answered Bertel eagerly.

"Be still!" cried Larsson. "Well, go on; posito that we accomplish the lady's deliverance?"

"Only a trifle remains. I demand of Lieutenant Bertel King Gustaf Adolf's ring."

"Your money or your life, like a highwayman!" said Larsson derisively.

"You ask for that which I do not possess," answered Bertel.

The Jesuit gave him a suspicious glance.

"The king ordered Duke Bernhard to give you the ring, and you must have received it."

"All this is quite unknown to me," said Bertel with truth, but surprised and delighted at this unexpected news.

The Jesuit resumed his smiling composure.

"If that is how it stands, my dear sons," said he, "let us talk no more about the ring. As far as your conversion to the true believing Church is concerned..."

Bertel was just about to answer, but was interrupted by the captain, who, a moment before, had made a movement with the upper part of his body, which the light did not reach.

"Yes, as far as that matter is concerned," Larsson hastened to add; "you know, reverend father, that there are two sides to it: questio an and questio quomodo. Now to speak of questio an first, my sainted rector, Vincentius Flachsenius, used to say, always place negare as prima regula juris. Your reverence undoubtedly finds it unexpected and agreeable to hear a royal captain talk Latin like a cardinal. Your reverence should know that we, in Abo Cathedral School, studied Ciceronem, Senecam, and Ovidium, also called Naso; for my part I have always considered Cicero a great talker, and Seneca a blockhead; but as for Ovid ..."

The Jesuit moved towards the door, and said dryly,

"Then you choose the stake?"

"Rather than the disgrace of an apostasy!" exclaimed Bertel, who had not noticed Larsson's hints and motions.

"My friend," the captain hastily added, "thinks very sensibly and naturally that the worst part of the matter is the public scandal. Thus, worthy father, let us confer about questio quomodo. Posito that we become good Catholics, and enter the Emperor's service ... but deign to come a little closer; my friend Bertel is rather hard of hearing ever since he had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the mighty Pappenheim."

The Jesuit cautiously advanced a little nearer, after convincing himself with a glance that retreat stood open.

"It is I who decide the conditions," said he haughtily. "Yes or no?"

"Yes, yes, of course," replied Larsson quickly, as he continued to rub himself. "Consequently we are on sound grounds both with questio an and questio quomodo. Your reverence possesses a persuasive tongue. We will now come to questio ubi and questio quando, for according to logicam and meta-physicam ... Pardon me, worthy father, I don't say a word, I consent to it all. But," continued the captain, as he lowered his voice, "deign to cast a glance at my friend Bertel's right forefinger. I can tell your reverence my friend is a great rogue; I am very much mistaken if he has not got the king's ring on at this moment."

The Jesuit, carried away by his curiosity, came a few steps nearer. Swift as an eel Larsson rolled himself to the door, for he was unable to rise on account of his bonds; and when the monk wished to retreat, the captain, who had cut through the ligatures which held his right arm, against a sharp stone, suddenly seized the Jesuit's legs and threw him down. Father Hieronymus made desperate efforts to free himself from the captain's grasp; the lantern was broken into fragments, the light extinguished, and a thick darkness enveloped the wrestlers. Bertel and Pekka, both unable to get up and assist, rolled themselves at random towards the spot, but without reaching it. Then the brave captain felt a sharp sensation in his shoulder, and directly afterwards a warm stream of blood. With a mighty oath he wrenched the dagger from his enemy's hand, and returned the stab. The Jesuit now begged for mercy.

"With the greatest pleasure, my son," answered the sarcastic captain. "But only on three conditions: the first, that you renounce Loyola, your lord and master, and declare him to be an emissary of the devil. Do you agree to it?"

"I agree to everything," murmured the pater.

"The second: that you start off and hang yourself to the first hook you find in the ceiling."

"Yes, yes, only let me go."

"The third: that you travel to Beelzebub, your patron," ... and with these words Larsson flung his enemy violently against the rocky wall, after which there was a dead silence.

The dagger was now used to quickly sever the prisoners' bonds, and then it only remained to find the door.

When the three fugitives, after having secured the treasury door from the outside, reached the dark and narrow stairway, which led to the upper portion of the castle, they stayed a moment to consult together. Their situation even now was not enviable, for they knew of old that the stairs led to the bishop's former bed-chamber, from whence two or three rooms had to be crossed before they came to the large armoury, and through that to the courtyard, after which they still had to pass the closed drawbridge and the guard. All the rooms, except the bed-chamber, which the Jesuit himself had taken possession of, had, two hours before, when the prisoners were carried down, been filled partly with soldiers, and partly with the sick and their nurses.

"One thing grieves me," whispered Larsson, "and that is, that I did not draw the fur off the fox when I held him by the ears. In the garments of piety I could have gone scot-free through purgatory like another Saulus inter prophetas. But as it is, my friend Bertel, I ask, in my simplicity, how shall we get away from here?"

"We will cut our way out. The garrison are asleep; the darkness of the night favours us."

"I confess, my friend, that if anybody, even I, Larsson himself, should call you a poltroon, I would call that fellow a liar. It is true that you once as good as solo, alone, alienus, all by yourself, took this fortress; but you had then at least a sword in your hand, and a few thousands of brave boys in the rear. Hush! I heard a step on the stairs ... no, it was nothing. Let us push on cautiously. Here it will serve us to tread gingerly, like maidens; the heavy peasant's boots sound as if we were a squadron of cavalry."

The fugitives had ascended about thirty or forty steps, and yet there seemed more, until a faint ray of light glimmered at the top in the passage. They then came to a door; it stood ajar. They stopped, and held their breath; not a sound could be heard. The brave captain now ventured to put in his head, then his foot, and finally his whole stout person.

"We are on the right track," he whispered; "boots off, the whole company must march in their stockinged feet—posito that the company has stockings. March!"

The bishop's bed-chamber, into which the three now entered on tip-toe, was a large and magnificent room. A flickering lamp faintly illumined the precious gobelin tapestry, the gilded images of the saints, and the ebony bedstead, inlaid with pearls, where the wealthy prelate used to fall asleep, with his goblet of Rhenish wine beside him. No living creature was visible, but from one of the windows which overlooked the courtyard they could see the castle chapel opposite, brilliantly lighted and filled with people. Even the courtyard was occupied by a crowd, visible owing to the reflection from the windows, and many of whom carried lighted candles.

"I will let them salt and pickle me like a cucumber if I understand what all these people are doing here in the dead of night," muttered the enraged captain. "You will find that they have assembled here to see three honest Finnish soldiers roasted by a slow fire like Aland herrings."

"We must look for weapons, and die like men," said Bertel, as he glanced through the room.

"Hurrah!" he exclaimed, "here are three swords, just what we require."

"And three daggers," added Larsson, who, in a large niche behind the image of a saint, found a little arsenal of all kinds of weapons. "The worthy fathers have a certain weakness for daggers, as the East Bothnians for 'punkkons,' or peasants' knives."

"I think," joined in the taciturn Pekka, as he caught sight of a good-sized flask in a corner, "that to-night being Xmas eve..."

"Brave boy!" interrupted the captain, inspired also by this sight, "you have a wonderfully keen scent where good liquor is concerned. Pious Jesuit, you have, anyhow, accomplished some good in the world! Xmas eve, did you say? Stupid, why didn't you tell us at once? It is clear as the day, that half of Würzburg is streaming to the chapel to hear Father Hieronymus say mass. 'Pon my honour, I fear that he will keep them waiting for some time, the good pater. Here goes, my friend, I will drink to you; an officer ought to always set his troops a good example. Your health, my boys ... damnation ... the miserable monk has basely cheated us. I have swallowed poison. I am a dead man!" And the honest captain turned pale as a corpse.

Both Bertel and Pekka had hard work to restrain their laughter, notwithstanding their critical position, when they saw Larsson at once white from fright and black from the fluid he had drank and spat out again.

"Be more careful another time," said Bertel, "and you will avoid drinking ink."

"Ink! I might have known that the earless scrawler would be up to some devilry. Two things trouble me to-night more than all the autos-da-fé: that the sweet Ketchen, with the soft hands, deceived us, and that I have swallowed the most useless stuff in the world—ink, bah!"*

* Here Captain Svanholm trod on Cousin Svenonius' toes, and the latter thoughtfully took a pinch of snuff.

"If we had nothing else to do I could show you something that ink has done," rejoined Bertel, as he hastily turned over a pile of papers on the writing-table. "Here is a letter from the archbishop ... he is coming to-morrow ... we are to be solemnly burned ... they will tempt us to abjure our faith, and promise us grace ... but burn us, nevertheless! Infamous!"

"Roman!" observed the captain phlegmatically.

In the meantime Larsson had drawn out three monks' cloaks and hoods; they put them on, and now ventured to proceed farther on their dangerous enterprise.

The next two rooms were empty. Two common beds indicated that some menial monks had here their abode, and were now gone to mass.

"Bravo," whispered Larsson, "they will take us for sheep in wolves' clothing, and believe that we are also going to attend mass. Hist! didn't you hear something? A woman's voice. Be still!"

They stopped, and heard in the darkness a young female's voice, praying:

"Holy Virgin, forgive me this time, and save me from death; I will to-morrow take the veil, and serve you for ever."

"It is Ketchen's voice," said the captain. "She may be innocent, poor child! Upon my honour, it would be base of a cavalier not to deliver a sweet girl with such a soft hand."

"Let us be off!" whispered Bertel in vexation. But the captain had already discovered a little door, bolted on the outside; inside was a cell, and in the cell a trembling girl. Her eyes, used to the darkness, saw the monk's garb, and she threw herself at the captain's feet, exclaiming,

"Grace, my father, grace! I will confess all; I have favoured the prisoners' flight; I have given wine to the guard. But spare my life, have mercy upon me, I am so young. I do not wish to die."

"Who the devil has said that you are to die, my brave girl?" interrupted the captain's voice. "No, you shall live, with your soft hand, and your warm lips, as true as I'm not a Jesuit, but Lars Larsson, captain in his Royal Majesty's and the Crown's service, and herewith take you ... as my wedded wife, for better or for worse," continued the captain, no doubt because he thought that the well-known formula ought to be said to an end when he had once begun it.

"Away, away, with or without the girl, but away; they are coming, and we still have to pass the large armoury!"

"Allow me to tell you, my friend Bertel, that you are the greatest fidget I know, maximus fiescus, as the ancients so truly expressed themselves. How is it, my girl, you are not a nun ... only a novice? Well, it makes no difference to me. You shall be my wedded wife ... in case I ever marry. Here is a cloak; there now, straighten yourself up and look bold."

"It is no cloak, it is a mass-robe," whispered Ketchen, who had scarcely time to recover from her amazement.

"The deuce, a mass-robe! Wait, you take my cloak, and I will take the robe. I shall chant in their ears dies irae, so that all will be astonished."

The sound of several voices in the armoury outside interrupted the captain in his priestly speculations.

"They have missed the Jesuit, they are looking for him, and we are lost through your silly jabbering," whispered the exasperated Bertel. "We must be careful now not to betray ourselves. Come along, all of you."

"And Latin first!" exclaimed the captain.

All four went out. In the armoury there were about thirty sick beds, but only two sisters in attendance. This sight was reassuring, but much more dangerous was the meeting with two monks, who were in violent altercation in the doorway. When they saw Larsson in the mass-robe, and three figures behind him in hooded cloaks, the pious fathers were evidently startled. The captain raised his arm to bless them, uttered a solemn pax vobiscum, and was then going to steal by with a grave step, when he was checked by the foremost monk.

"Worthy father," said the latter, as he surveyed the unknown prelate from head to foot, "what procures our castle the honour at so unusual a time...?"

"Pax vobiscum!" repeated the captain devoutly. "The pious Father Hieronymus orders you to say mass with all your might ... his reverence is sick ... he has toothache."

"Let us go and wait upon him," said one of the monks, entering the smaller room. But the other seized Larsson by the robe, and regarded him in a way which much alarmed the brave captain.

"Quis vus et quid eltis!" said the captain in a regular dilemma. "Qui quoe quod, meus tuus suus ... go to the devil, you bald-headed baboons!" roared Larsson, unable to restrain himself any longer, and pushing the obstinate monk into the chamber he bolted the door. Then all four hastened at full speed down to the courtyard. The alarm was immediately given behind them; the monks shouting at the top of their voices, and the nuns joining in, until the crowd of people who thronged the courtyard began to listen.

"We are lost!" whispered Ketchen, "if we do not reach the drawbridge by the back way."

They hurried there ... the tumult increased ... they passed the guard at the large sally-port.

"Halt! who's there?"

"Petrus and Paulus," promptly answered Bertel. They were allowed to pass. Fortunately the drawbridge was down. But the whole castle was now alarmed.

"We will jump into the river, the night is dark, they will not see us!" cried Bertel.

"No," said Larsson, "I will not leave my girl, even if it should cost me my head."

"Here stand three saddled horses, be quick and mount."

"Up, you sweetest of all the nuns in Franconia, up in the saddle!" and the captain hastily swung the trembling Ketchen before him on the horse's back. They all galloped away into the darkness. But behind them raged tumult and uproar, the alarm bells sounding in all the turrets, and the whole of Würzburg wondering greatly what could have happened on Xmas eve itself.

CHAPTER IV.
DUKE BERNHARD AND BERTEL.

Three months after the events related in the preceding chapter we find Lieutenant Bertel one day in one of the rooms at the martial court, which Duke Bernhard of Weimar kept sometimes at Kassel and sometimes at Nassau, or wherever the duties of the war compelled him to go.

It was a spring day in March, 1633. Officers came and departed, orderlies hastened in all directions; Duke Bernhard had the greatest share of the south and west of Germany to look after, and the times were most anxious.

After having waited a good while, the young officer was conducted to the duke. The latter looked up irritably from his maps and papers, and seemed to wait to be spoken to; but Bertel remained silent.

"Who are you?" asked the duke in sharp, harsh tones.

"Gustaf Bertel, Lieutenant in his Royal Majesty's Finnish cavalry."

"What do you want?"

The young man coloured up and remained silent. The duke noticed this and looked at him with a discontented air.

"I understand," the latter said at last, "you have as usual been fighting with the German officers about the girls. I will not allow this sort of thing. A soldier's sword should be reserved for his country's enemies."

"I have not been fighting, your highness."

"All the worse. You came to ask for a furlough to go to Finland. I refuse it to you. I want all my men here. You will stay, Lieutenant. Good-bye!"

"I do not come to ask for a furlough."

"Well, What the devil do you want? Can you not speak out? Be short and quick! Leave the clergy to say prayers, and the girls to blush."

"Your highness has received from his Majesty, the late king, a ring..."

"I cannot remember it."

"... which his Majesty asked your highness to give to an officer in his life-guards."

The duke passed his hand over his high forehead.

"That officer is dead," he said.

"I am that officer, your highness. I was wounded at Lützen, and shortly after taken prisoner by the Imperialists."

Duke Bernhard beckoned Bertel to come nearer, and gave him a searching look; he seemed satisfied with his examination.

"Close the door," he said, "and sit down by my side."

Bertel obeyed. His cheeks were burning with anxiety.

"Young man," said the duke, "you carry on your forehead the marks of your origin, and I ask for no further evidence. Your mother is a peasant's daughter of Storkyro, in Finland, and her name is Emerentia Aronsdotter Bertila."

"No, your highness, the person you speak of is my elder sister, born of my father's first marriage. I have never seen my mother."

The duke looked at him with surprise.

"Very well," said he doubtfully, as he looked among some papers in his portfolio, "we will now speak of this sister of yours, Emerentia Aronsdotter. Her father had performed great services for Carl IX., and he was urged to ask a favour. He asked to be allowed to send his only daughter, then his only child, to Stockholm, to be educated with the young ladies of rank at the Court."

"I know very little about this."

"At thirteen years of age the peasant girl was sent to Stockholm, where her father's vanity and wealth procured her an abode, appearance, and education, far above her station. He was consumed with ambition, and as he himself could not gain a noble crest, he relied upon his daughter's high birth on her mother's side. Bertila's first wife was an orphan of the noble family Stjernkors, deprived of her inheritance by the war, and then rejected by her proud family on account of her marriage with the rich peasant Bertila."

"This is all unknown to me."

"The young Emerentia suffered a great deal in Stockholm from the envy and contempt of her aristocratic companions; for many of them were poorer than herself, and could not endure a plebeian at their side as an equal.

"But her beauty was as extraordinary as her wisdom and goodness. Within two years she had acquired the habits of the upper classes, whilst preserving the rustic simplicity of her heart. This wonderful combination of mental and physical graces reminded old persons of a lovely picture of their youthful days—Karin Mansdotter."

As he said these words, the duke closely watched the young officer; but Bertel did not betray any agitation, and remained silent. All this was something new and incomprehensible to him.

"Very well," continued the duke after a pause. "This beauty did not long remain unnoticed. A very young man of high birth soon fell in love with the beautiful maiden, then only fifteen years old, and she returned his affection with the whole devotion of a first love. This attachment soon became known to those who surrounded the noble youth; state policy was endangered, and the nobility were offended by the distinction thus conferred on a girl of low birth. They resolved to marry the maiden to an officer of the same origin as herself, who had distinguished himself in the Danish War. This intention came to the ears of the young people. Poor children! they were so young; he seventeen, she fifteen, both inexperienced and in love. Shortly after, the youth was sent to the war in Poland. The young girl's marriage came to nothing, and she was sent back by the offended nobility in disgrace to her cabin in Finland. Do you wish to hear any more, Lieutenant Bertel?"

"I do not understand, your highness, what this account of my sister's life has to do with..."

"... the ring you ask for. Patience. When the young man had a secret meeting with his beloved for the last time, just before his departure, she gave him a ring, whose earlier history I do not know, but which was probably made by a Finnish sorcerer, and had all the qualities of a talisman. She conjured her lover to always wear this ring on his finger, in war and danger, as he would thus become invulnerable. Twice this warning was forgotten, once at Dirschau..."

"Great God!"

"... the second time at Lützen."

Bertel's emotions were of such a violent nature that all the blood left his cheeks, and he sat pale as a marble statue.

"Young man, you now know part of what you ought to know, but you do not know all. We have spoken of your sister. We will now speak of yourself. It was his Majesty's intention to offer you a nobleman's coat of arms, and which you with your good sword have so well deserved. But old Aron Bertila, actuated by his hatred for the nobility had asked as a favour that the king would give you an opportunity to gain any other distinction than that one. The king could not refuse this request from a father, and therefore you are still a commoner by name. But I, who am not bound by any promise to your father, will offer you, young man, that which has hitherto been denied you: a knight's spur and coat of arms."

"Your highness ... this favour makes me wonder and mute; how have I deserved it?"

Duke Bernhard smiled with a strange expression.

"How, my friend? you have only half understood me."

Bertel remained silent.

"Well, with or without your knowledge and will, my friend, I already regard you as a nobleman. We will speak more about it another time. Your ring ... Ah! I have forgotten it. Do you remember what it was like?"

The duke now searched zealously in his portfolio. "They say that the king wore a copper ring, and on the inside of it magic signs were engraved, and the letters R.R.R."

"It is possible that I have mislaid it, for I cannot find it. And who the devil has time to think of such childish things? The ring must have been stolen from my private casket. If I find it again I will give it to you, and if not, you know that which is worth more. Go, young man, and be worthy of my confidence and the great king's memory. No one is to know what I have told you. Farewell; we will see each other again."

CHAPTER V.
LOVE AND HATE AGREE.

Again we fly from Germany's spring back to the North's winter. Before we go further on the bloody path of the Thirty Years' War, we will pay a visit to two of the chief personages of this narrative high up in East Bothnia.

It was about Advent time, 1632. A violent storm with heavy snow beat against the old ramparts of Korsholm, and drove the waves of the Baltic against the ice-covered shores. All navigation for the year had ceased. The newly conscripted soldiers had gone to Stralsund by way of Stockholm, at the end of July, and were impatiently waiting for news from the war. Then it happened in the middle of November that a rumour was spread about the country of the king's death. Such reports fly through the air, one does not know how or where they come from. Great misfortunes are known at a distance as presentiments, just as an earthquake far beyond its own circle causes a qualm in the mind. But this report had more than once been spread and refuted. The people relied upon King Gustaf Adolf's good fortune, and when corroboration did not arrive, the whole matter was forgotten, all thinking it was a false story.

It is an ordinary fact in life that, as we hate those to whom we have occasioned a wrong, so we feel well disposed towards persons whom we have had the opportunity of serving. Lady Marta of Korsholm was not a little proud of her brave defence against the drunken soldiers, and did not hesitate to attribute the preservation of the castle to the heroism she had then displayed. That she had saved Regina's life gave the latter great importance in her eyes; and neither could she refuse her admiration for the courage and self-sacrifice which the young girl had shown on the same occasion. The high-born prisoner was her pride; and she did not omit to watch her steps like an Argus; but she gave Regina a larger room, let her have old Dorthe again as a waiting woman, and provided her with an abundance of good food. Regina also was less proud and cold, she would sometimes answer Lady Marta with a word or a nod; but of all the nice things that were offered her, the choice meats, the strong beer, etc., she took little or nothing; she had sunk apparently into a state of indifference, told her beads devoutly, but in other respects let one day pass as another.

Lady Marta held the deep conviction that her prisoner, if not precisely the Roman Emperor's own daughter, was, nevertheless, a princess of the highest birth. She therefore hit upon the unlucky idea of trying to convert so distinguished a person from her papistical heresy, on the supposition that she would thereby accomplish something very remarkable when the war was ended and Regina was exchanged. Regina thus became exposed to the same proselytizing attempts which she herself had undertaken with the great Gustaf Adolf; but Lady Marta's were not so delicate or refined in their application as her own. She overwhelmed the poor girl with Lutheran sermons, psalm-books, and tracts, also often made long speeches interspersed with proverbs, and when this was without avail, she sent the castle chaplain to preach to the prisoner. Of course all this occurred to deaf ears. Regina was sufficiently firm in her faith to listen with patience, but she suffered from it; her stay at Korsholm became more unbearable every day, and who can blame her, if with secret longings she sighed for the day when she could regain her freedom.

Dorthe, on the contrary, flamed up every time the heretic preacher or the plucky old lady began their sermons, and rattled through a whole string of prayers and maledictions both in Latin and Low German, the result generally being that she was shut up for two or three days in the dungeon of the castle, until her longing for her lady's company once more made her tractable.

And so passed a half-year of Lady Regina's captivity.

A better product of Lady Marta's goodwill was, that Regina was allowed to embroider, and fine materials were ordered for her in the autumn from Stockholm. Thus it became possible for her to work a large piece of silk with the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ in silver and gold. Lady Marta in her innocence considered the work a sacrament cloth, which Regina might present to Vasa church, as a proof of her change of sentiments. A warrior's eyes, on the other hand, would have discerned in it an intended flag, a Catholic banner, which the imprisoned girl was quietly preparing in expectation of the day when her work would wave at the head of the Catholic hosts.

Still Lady Marta was not quite satisfied with the Holy Virgin's image, which seemed to her surrounded by too large a halo to be truly Lutheran. She therefore considered how she could procure her prisoner a more suitable occupation. It happened now and then that the daughter of the Storkyro peasant king, Meri, when she was in town, made an errand to Korsholm, and in order to gain the favour of the lady of the castle, presented her with several skeins of the finest and silkiest linen floss, which no one in the whole vicinity could spin as well as Meri. Lady Marta consequently got the idea one fine day to teach her prisoner to spin, and to give her Meri as a teacher in this art. Meri on her part desired nothing better. The near connection in which the imprisoned lady had stood to the king, gave her an irresistible interest in Meri's eyes. She wished to hear something about him—the hero, the king, the great, never-to-be-forgotten man, who stood before her mind's eye with more than earthly lustre. She wished to know what he had said, what he had done, what he had loved and hated on earth; she wished for once to feel herself transported by his glory, and then to die herself—forgotten. Poor Meri!

So Meri made her second acquaintance with Lady Regina in the castle. She was received at first with coldness and indifference, and her spinning scarcely pleased the proud young lady. But gradually her submissive mild demeanour won Regina's goodwill, and a captive's natural desire to communicate with beings outside the prison walls finally made Regina more open.

They spun very little, it is true, but they talked together like mistress and maid, especially during the days when Dorthe was shut up on account of her wicked tongue, and it was quite opportune that Meri recollected some German from more brilliant days. Meri knew how to constantly lead the conversation on to the subject of the king, and she soon divined Regina's enthusiastic love. But Regina was very far from having any idea of Meri's earlier experiences; she ascribed her questions to the natural curiosity which such high personages always excite in the minds of the common people. Sometimes she seemed astonished at the delicacy and nobleness of the simple peasant woman's expressions and views. There were moments when Meri's personality appeared to her as an enigma full of contradictions, and then she asked herself whether she ought not to consider this woman as a spy. But the next instant she repented this thought; and when the spinner looked at her with her clear, mild, penetrating gaze, then there was something which said to Regina's heart, this woman does not dissemble.

They were sitting one day in the beginning of December, and Dorthe was again shut up for her unseasonable remarks to the chaplain. There was a striking contrast between these two beings whom fate had brought together from such opposite directions, but who on one point shared the same interest.

The first, young, proud, dark, flashing, and beautiful, a princess, even in captivity; the other of middle age, blonde, pale, mild, humble, and free, and yet very submissive. Regina now seventeen, could be considered twenty; Meri now thirty-six, had something so childish and innocent in her whole appearance, that at certain moments she might be taken for seventeen. She could have been Regina's mother, and yet she who had suffered so much, seemed almost like a child in comparison with the early matured southerner at her side. Lady Regina had been spinning a little, and during the operation broken many threads. Provoked and impatient, she pushed the distaff away and resumed her embroidery. This happened very often, and her instructress was accustomed to it.

"That is a pretty image," said Meri, after a look at the piece of silk. "What does it represent?"

"God's Holy Mother, Sancta Maria," answered Regina, as she made the sign of the cross, which she was always in the habit of doing when mentioning the name of the Holy Virgin.

"And what is it for?" asked Meri with a naïve familiarity.

Regina looked at her. Again a suspicion came into her mind, but it immediately passed away.

"I am embroidering the banner of the Holy Faith for Germany," replied Regina proudly. "When it one day waves, the heretics will flee before the wrath of the mother of God."

"When I think of the mother of God," said Meri, "I imagine her mild, good, and peaceful; I imagine her as a mother alone with her love." Meri said these words with a peculiar tremor in her voice.

"The mother of God is Heaven's queen; she will fight against the godless and destroy them."

"But when the mother of God takes to strife, King Gustaf Adolf will meet her with uncovered head and lowered sword, bend his knee to her, and say: 'Holy Virgin, I am not fighting for thy glory, but for that of thy son, our Saviour.' 'He that fights for my son also fights for me,' she will reply, 'because I am a mother.'"

"Your king is a heretic," excitedly answered Regina. Nothing irritated her more than opposition to the Catholic faith, of which the doctrine of the Holy Virgin as Heaven's ruler is a constituent. "Your king is a tyrant and unbeliever who deserves all the anger of the saints on his head. Do you know, Meri, that I hate your king?"

"And I love him," said Meri in a scarcely audible voice.

"Yes," continued Regina, "I hate him like sin, death, and perdition. If I were a man and had an arm and sword, it would be the aim of my life to destroy his hosts and his work. You are happy, Meri, you know nothing about the war, you do not know what Gustaf Adolf has done to the poor Catholics. But I have seen it, and my faith and my country cry out for revenge. There are moments when I could kill him."

"And when Lady Regina lifts her white hand with the gleaming dagger over the king's head, then the king will expose his breast where the great heart beats; look at her little white hand with a glance of sublime calmness and say, 'Thou delicate white hand, which worketh the image of the mother of God, strike, if thou canst, my heart is here, and it beats for the freedom and enlightenment of the world;' then the white hand will sink slowly down, and the dagger will drop from it, unnoticed, and God's mother on the cloth will smile again. She knew well that it would be so. It would have been just the same with herself. For King Gustaf Adolf none can kill, and none hate, because God's angel walks by his side and turns human beings' hate to love."

Regina forgot her work, and regarded Meri with her large, dark, moist eyes. There was so much that surprised and astonished her in these words, but she kept silent. Finally she said:

"The king wears an amulet."

"Yes," said Meri, "he wears a talisman, but it is not the copper ring that the people speak of—it is his exalted human heart which gives up everything for what is good and noble on earth. When he was still very young, and had not yet acquired fame or renown, he only possessed his blonde hair, his high brow, and his mild blue eyes. Then he wore no amulet, and yet blessing and love and happiness walked by his side. All the angels in Heaven and all human beings on earth loved him."

Regina's eyes glistened with tears.

"Did you see him when he was young?" she asked.

"Did I see him! yes."

"And you have loved him like all the others?"

"More than all the others, lady."

"And you love him still?"

"Yes, I love him much. Like you; but you would kill him and I would die for him."

Regina sprang up, burst out weeping, clasped Meri in her arms and kissed her.

"Do not think that I would kill him. Oh, Holy Virgin, I would a thousand times give my life to save his! But you do not know, Meri. It is an anguish that you cannot understand, it is a fearful conflict when one loves a man, a hero, the personification of the highest and grandest in life, and yet is commanded by a Holy Faith to hate this man, to kill him, to persecute him to the grave. You do not know, happy one, who only needs to love and bless, what it means to be tossed between love and hate, like a ship on the mighty waves; to be obliged to curse one whom you bless in your heart, to sit within the walls of a prison a prey to the battling emotions which incessantly struggle for mastery in your innermost soul. Ah! that was the night, when I tried to reconcile my love with my faith, and bring him, the mighty one, to the way of salvation. If the saints had then allowed my weak voice to convince him of his error ... Then poor Regina would have followed him with joy as his humblest servant through all his life, and received in her own breast all the lances and balls that sought his heart. But the saints did not grant me—unworthy being—so great an honour, and therefore I now sit here a prisoner on account of my faith and my love; and if an angel broke down the walls of my prison and said to me, 'Fly, your country again awaits you,' I would answer: 'It is his will, the beloved; for his sake I suffer, for his sake I remain,' and yet you believe that I wish to kill him."

Regina wept much and bitterly, with all the violence of an intense passion which had been pent up for a long time. Meri with gentle hands removed the dark locks from her brow, and looking mildly and kindly into her tearful eyes, said with prophetic inspiration:

"Do not weep so, the day will arrive when you will be able to love without being obliged to curse him at the same time!"

"That day will never come, Meri."

"Yes, that day will come, when Gustaf Adolf is dead."

"Oh, may it never come, then! Rather would I suffer all my life ... It is still for his sake."

"Yes, lady, that day will come, not because you are younger and he is older. But have you never heard anyone say of a child which is brighter, kinder, and better than others, 'that child will not live long; it is too good for this world?' So does it seem to me about King Gustaf Adolf. He is too great, too noble, too good, to live long. God's angels wish to have him before his body withers and his soul grows weary. Believe me, they will take him from us."

Regina looked at her with an alarmed air.

"Who are you that speaks such words? How your eyes shine! you are not what you seem! who are you then? Oh, Holy Virgin, protect me!"

And Regina started up with all the superstitious terror that belonged to her time. Probably she could not account for her fear, but Meri's conversation had all along seemed strange and unaccountable, coming from the mouth of an uncultivated peasant woman in this barbarous land.

"Who am I?" repeated Meri, with the same mild look. "I am a woman who loves. That is all."

"And you say that the king will die?"

"God alone presides over human destinies, and the greatest among mortals is still but a mortal."

At that moment someone opened the door, and Lady Marta entered more solemnly than usual, and also somewhat paler. She now wore, instead of her bright striped woollen jacket, a deep mourning attire, and her whole appearance indicated something unusual. Regina and Meri both started at the sight.

Meri became pale as death, went straight to Lady Marta, looked her fixedly in the face, and said mechanically with a great effort,

"The king is dead."

"Do you know it already?" answered Lady Marta, surprised. "God preserve us, the bad news came an hour ago, with a courier from Tornea."

Lady Regina sank down in a swoon.

Meri, with a broken heart, retained her self-possession, and tried to recall Regina to life.

"The king has then fallen on the battlefield in the midst of victory?" she asked.

"On the battlefield of Lützen, the 6th of November, and in the midst of a glorious victory," replied Lady Marta, more and more surprised at Meri's knowledge.

"Awake, gracious lady, he has lived and died like a hero, worthy of the admiration of the whole world. He has fallen in the hour of triumph, in the highest lustre of his glory; his name will live in all times, and his name we will both bless."

Regina opened her dreamy eyes and clasped her hands in prayer.

"Oh, Holy Virgin," she said, "I thank thee that thou hast let him go in his greatness from the world, and thus taken away the curse which rested upon my love!"

And Meri dropped down at her side in prayer.

But below in the castle yard stood a tall, white-haired old man, with his stiff features distorted by grief and despair.

"A curse upon my work!" he cried; "my plan is frustrated beforehand, and the object for which I have lived slips from my grasp. Oh, fool that I was, to count upon a human being's life, and trying to hope that the king would acknowledge his son, and live until the son of Aron Bertila's daughter had time to win a brilliant fame in war, and walk abreast with the heiress to the Swedish throne! The king is dead, and my descendant is only a boy in his minority, who will soon be mixed with the multitude. Now it is only wanting for him to gain a nobleman's coat of arms, and place himself amongst the vampires between the only true powers of the state, the king and the people. Fool, fool that I was! The king is dead! Go, old Bertila, into the grave to fraternize with King John and the destroyer of aristocracy, King Carl, and bury thy proud plans among the same worms that have already consumed Prince Gustaf and Karin Mansdotter!"

And the old man seized Meri, who just then came out, violently by the hand, and said:

"Come, we have neither of us anything more to do in the world!"

"Yes," said Meri with suppressed grief, "we both still have a son!"

CHAPTER VI.
THE BATTLE OF NÖRDLINGEN.

Until now the Swedish lion, through the wisdom and valour of Gustaf Adolf, and of the leaders and men trained under him, had hastened from victory to victory, and overthrown all his opponents. At last a day of misfortune dawned; in a great battle the Swedish arms suffered a terrible defeat.

The brilliant Wallenstein had died the death of a traitor at Eger; now Gallas, the destroyer, overran central Germany, captured Regensburg, and advanced against the free city of Nördlingen, in Schwaben; Duke Bernhard and Gustaf Horn hurried with the Swedish army to its rescue. They had, however, but 17,000 men, whilst Gallas had 33,000.

"We will attack," said the duke.

"Let us wait," said Horn.

They expected 5,000 men as a reinforcement, and fourteen days passed. Then Nördlingen came to sore straits, and began to light beacon fires on the walls at night. Again the duke wished to attack; again Horn preferred to entrench and assist the city without battle. Then they called this brave soul a cowardly man; and, indignant, but with dark presentiments, he resolved to fight. Repeated victories had made the Swedes over-confident, and they entered the conflict assured of success beforehand.

The battle took place on the 26th of August, 1634. Outside Nördlingen is a height called Arensberg, and between it and the town a smaller one. Upon the last the Imperialists had raised three redoubts.

The Swedish army stood on Arensberg, Horn on the right and the duke on the left wing. The battle-cry was the same as at Breitenfeld and Lützen: God with us!

Early in the morning a heavy rain fell. Once more the wise Horn wished to wait, but the duke, who held the supreme command, ordered an advance. Horn obeyed, and the right wing marched down the valley between the two heights. The impatience of the cavalry hastened the conflict, which resulted unfavourably even in the very beginning. The cannon of the Imperialists in the redoubts made great gaps in the lines of the cavalry, and the enemy's superiority made them hesitate. Horn sent two brigades to storm the middle redoubt. They captured it and pursued the enemy. Piccolomini checked their course and drove them back to the redoubt. There the powder happened to take fire. With a terrific explosion the earthwork flew into the air, and several hundreds of Swedes and Finns with it. This was the first calamity.

Upon this position, however, depended the victory. For a few moments the spot stood empty; Piccolomini's soldiers, alarmed by the report and destruction, could not be induced to advance and occupy it. At last they did so. Horn asked for help in order to expel them. The duke sent the young Bohemian, Thurn, with the yellow regiment. He made a mistake, attacked the wrong redoubt, and engaged with a greatly superior force. Seventeen times he charged the enemy, and as often was he repulsed. In vain did Horn try to storm the height. Thurn's error was the second calamity.

On the left wing the duke had begun the conflict against the artillery and cavalry. At the first encounter the Imperialists were hurled back, and the duke's German cavalry broke their ranks and pursued the enemy. But Tilly's spirit seemed to-day to give the Imperialists courage. They advanced their ordered and superior troops against the assailants, checked them, and drove them back with loss. The duke tried to get reinforcements into Nördlingen, but failed. In vain did he drive Gallas before him. New masses of the enemy constantly opposed him, and in his rear the Croats plundered his baggage-wagons.

It was about noon. Horn's troops had been under fire for eight consecutive hours, and were worn out with fatigue. With every hour their hopes of victory grew less and less, but their unflinching, indomitable courage remained the same. They had observed the disorder in the left wing. They themselves were in a desperate plight down in the valley, where Piccolomini's bullets fell every moment into the underbush, and sprinkled the fallen branches with blood. Then Horn proposed to withdraw to Arensberg, and the duke at last consented. He considered the matter, however, for nearly two hours; but these two hours he would afterwards have been glad to purchase with half a lifetime.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Horn made the Finnish cavalry make a feigned attack, so as to cover the retreat, and began like a prudent general to withdraw in good order. The Imperialists perceiving his intention, pressed on with double force. They began to hope, what they had not dared to entertain before, that even the Swedes might be conquered, and Piccolomini's stumpy figure flew through the ranks, urging his men to bear down with their collected forces upon the Swedes' exposed flanks, and totally crush them.

In the valley behind the Swedes and between the two heights flowed a stream with high banks, and swollen by the abundant rains. At the little village of Hirnheim, the stream was spanned by a single bridge, and this point Horn had carefully guarded in order to secure the retreat. The artillery passed first over the bridge, and were safe on Arensberg. The first lines of Horn's wing had also reached the village, and the rest were only a short distance from it, when a new calamity occurred, the third and the worst on this most disastrous day. Duke Bernhard had undertaken to detain the enemy with his left wing until Horn and his men had crossed the stream. But he soon discovered that he had consulted valour rather than prudence. The enemy concentrated their forces, and increased their terrible attacks. Three times De Werth charged the duke's cavalry; three times was he repulsed. The fourth time, however, he broke through the duke's lines. In vain the latter sent a squadron to take him in flank. Mad with rage, the duke snatched his gold-embroidered banner from an ensign's hand, and followed by his bravest men, rushed into the midst of the enemy. It was all useless. His best men were slain, his horse shot under him, and the banner wrenched from his hand; wounded and overpowered he was nearly taken prisoner, when a young officer at his side lent him his horse, and he escaped with great difficulty. His infantry had already been routed, being unable to support the attacks of the cavalry on the open plain; and when the wounded leader galloped away, his whole wing followed in the utmost disorder, convinced that all was lost.

At that moment, Horn's infantry crossed the narrow bridge. Then confused and loud cries arose, that the battle was lost, and the enemy close upon them. First single horsemen, then whole troops of the duke's cavalry rushed along the road to the bridge, and rode amongst the infantry, trampling some under their horses' hoofs, and throwing the rest into fearful confusion. The efforts of Horn and his nearest officers to stay the frantic rout were fruitless. On the narrow bridge everything was mixed pell-mell—men, horses, wagons, dead, and wounded; and finally the duke's whole wing rushed to this fatal spot. Like a storm Piccolomini pressed upon the rear of the fugitives; he sent some light guns up on the heights, where they played with terrible effect on the retreating mass; every ball cut long lanes through it. Then the Croats fell upon the rout, and as friend and foe became mixed together, the artillery fire had to cease. The long lances and swords of the Imperial cavalry made great slaughter. All the Swedes and Finns seemed doomed to destruction.

Gustaf Horn, the wise and courageous Finnish general, whom Gustaf Adolf called "his right hand," was now the last to retain self-possession and courage at this terrible crisis. With the remains of three regiments he had taken up a position by the bridge, and the fugitives fled past him without drawing his force into the current. They implored him to save himself; but his stubborn, Finnish will refused to listen to these appeals, and he stayed where he was. For a time the pursuit was checked, the only thing that Horn hoped to gain by his intrepid resistance. Gallas sent one of his best Spanish brigades to oust him. Horn drove them back with loss. The victorious De Werth fell upon him with his dragoons. The result was the same. The enemy now concentrated their forces, and Horn was attacked on three sides at once. They offered him his life if he would surrender. He replied with a sword-thrust, and his men gave the same response. Not one would ask for quarter. At last, when nearly all those near him had fallen, he was overwhelmed by numbers and taken prisoner. Then the few surviving heroes surrendered.

When the Swedish army in full flight rushed over Arensberg, Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar tore his hair, and exclaimed that he was a fool, and Horn a wise man. Later on the duke consoled himself with Elsas, but that day he had reason to repent of his rashness. Six thousand Swedes, Finns, and Germans covered the blood-stained heights of Nordlingen; 6,000 were taken prisoners, and amongst them the two Finns, Horn and Wittenberg, who were well treated by the enemy. Of the other 10,000, half were wounded, and most of the remaining mercenaries deserted. The army had lost 4,000 baggage-wagons, 300 banners, and all their artillery. A miserable remnant made its way to Mentz, plundering and pillaging as it fled, and suffering from extreme want.

More disastrous to Sweden than the loss of these 12,000 men was the damage to its prestige, and the enemy's regained belief in victory. The battle of Nordlingen became the turning point in the Thirty Years' War, and excited both joy and consternation. throughout Europe, until Baner's genius and victories restored their lost lustre to the Swedish arms once more.

Amongst those who fought at Horn's side to the last, was our old friend, Captain Larsson. The sturdy little captain had on this occasion no time to open his talkative mouth; he perspired profusely from the heat, and had fought since dawn; yet he had not received the least scratch upon his fleshy person. Let it be said in his praise, that at Nordlingen he thought of neither Rhine wine or Bavarian nuns, but honestly plied his weapons as well as possible. Nevertheless, we will not assert that he then cut down thirty Imperialists with his trusty sword, as he afterwards declared in good faith.

He was taken prisoner with Horn; but it was not his capture that most provoked the captain, but the terrible vexation he experienced on seeing the Croats afterwards empty at their leisure the Swedish stock of wine which they had captured with the baggage-wagons.

Another of our friends, Lieutenant Bertel, fought at the duke's side all day, and was the one who offered him his horse. We shall see, by-and-by, that the duke did not forget this service. Bertel, like Larsson, was hotly engaged in the battle, but, less fortunate than the latter, received several wounds, and was finally borne along in the stream of fugitives to Arensberg. Almost without knowing how, he found himself the next day far from the battlefield, and proceeded with the remnant of the duke's army to Mentz.

CHAPTER VII.
THE LOST SON.

It is Epiphany, in 1635, thus in mid-winter. In Aron Bertila's "stuga,"* at Storkyro, a large fire of pine logs crackled on the spacious hearth, for at that time heavy forests still grew around the fertile fields. Outside rages a snow-storm, with a heavy blast; the wolves howl on the ice of the stream; the famished lynx prowls around to find shelter. It is Twelfth-day evening, an hour or two after twilight. The Storkyro peasant king sits in his high-backed chair, at a short distance from the hearth, listening with scattered thoughts to his daughter Meri, who by the firelight reads aloud a chapter of Agricola's Finnish New Testament, for at that period the whole Bible had not been translated into the Finnish tongue. Bertila has grown very old since we last met him, then still vigorous in his old age. The great ideas that constantly revolve in his bald head give him no peace, and yet these plans are now completely shattered by the king's death, like fragments from a shipwreck floating around on the stormy billows of a dark sea. Strong souls like his generally succumb only by destroying themselves. All the changes and misfortunes of his turbulent life had not been able to break his iron will; but grief over a ruined hope, the vain attempt to reconstruct the vanished castles in the air, and the sorrow of seeing his own children themselves tear down his work, all this gnawed like a vulture upon his inner life. A single thought had made him twenty years older in two years, and this idea was presumptuous even to madness.

* A large room, filling the entire house space with the exception of one or two small chambers. Sleeping bunks are arranged round the walls. The later peasants' houses have more rooms.

"Why is not one of my own family at this moment King of Sweden?" Thus it ran.

At times Meri raises her mild blue eyes from the Holy Book and regards her old father with anxious looks. She, too, looks older; the quiet sorrow lies like the autumn over green groves; it neither breaks or kills, but makes the fresh leaves wither on the tree of life. Meri's glance is full of peace and submission. The thought that shines forth from her soul like a sun at its setting, is none other than this:

"Beyond the grave I shall again meet the joy of my heart, and then he will no longer wear an earthly crown."

Near her, to the left, sits old Larsson, short and stout like his jovial son. His good-natured, hearty face has for a time assumed a more solemn expression, as he listens to the reading of the sacred book. His hands are folded as in prayer, and now and then he stirs the fire a little, with friendly attention, so that Meri can see better.

Behind him in a devotional attitude sit some of the field hands; and this group, illuminated by the reflection of the fire, is completed by a purring grey cat, and a large shaggy watch-dog, curled up under Meri's feet, to which he seems proud to serve as a footstool.

When Meri in her reading came to the place in Luke, where it speaks of the Prodigal Son, old Bertila's eyes began to glitter with a sinister light.

"The reprobate!" he muttered to himself. "To waste one's inheritance, that is nothing! But to forget one's old father ... by God, that is shameful!"

Meri read until she came to the Prodigal Son's repentance: "And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

"What a fool of a father!" again muttered Aron Bertila to himself. "He ought to have bound him with cords, beaten him with rods, and then driven him away from his house back to the riotous living and the empty wine-cups!"

"Father!" whispered Meri reproachfully. "Be merciful, as our Heavenly Father is merciful, and takes the lost children to His arms."

"And if your son ever returns..." began Larsson in the same tone. But Bertila stopped him.

"Hold your tongues, and don't trouble yourselves about me. I have no longer any son ... who falls repentant at my feet," he added directly, when he saw two large, clear pearls glistening in Meri's eyelashes.

She continued: "And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."

"Stop reading that!" burst out the old man, in a bad temper. "See that my bed is in order, and let the folks go to sleep; it is now late."

At this moment horses' hoofs were heard outside on the creaking snow. This unusual occurrence on the evening of a sacred day made Larsson go to the low window, and breathe on the frost-covered pane, so as to look out into the storm. A sleigh, drawn by two horses, worked its way through the snow-drifts and drove into the yard. Two men in sheep-skin cloaks jumped out.

Seized with a sudden intuition, Larsson hurried out to meet the travellers, and quick as lightning Meri followed him. The door swung to behind them, and there was a moment's delay before it opened again.

But now a young man in a soldier's garb entered with bowed head, threw aside his plumed hat, white with snow, and going straight to old Bertila, knelt down, and bent his beautiful curly head still lower, as he said:

"Father, I am here, and ask your blessing!"

And behind him stood Meri and old Larsson, both with clasped hands, and raising their pleading eyes to the stern old man, with the same words:

"Father, here is thy son, give him thy blessing!"

For a brief moment Bertila struggled with himself, his lips slightly trembled, and his hand was unconsciously stretched out, as if to lift up the young man at his feet. But soon his bald head rose higher, his hand drew back, his keen eyes flashed darker than ever, and his lips trembled no more.

"Go!" said he, short and sharp; "go, you reprobate boy, back to your brother noblemen, and your sisters, the fine ladies. What seek you in the plain peasant's 'stuga,' which you despise? Go! I have no longer a son!"

But the youth went not.

"Do not be angry, my father," he said, "if in my youthful ambition I have at any time violated your commands. Who sent me out amongst the great and illustrious ones of the earth, to win fame and honour? Who bade me go to the war to ennoble my peasant name with great deeds? Who exposed me to the temptation of all the brilliant examples which surrounded the king? You, and only you, my father; and now you thrust away your son, who for your sake twice refused a patent of nobility."

"You!" exclaimed the old man with foaming rage. "You renounce a patent of nobility, you, who have blushed for your peasant name and taken another which would look more imposing? No, on your knees have you begged for a coat of arms. What do I know about its being offered you; what do I care. I only know that since your earliest childhood I have tried to implant in your soul, recreant, that there are no other rightful powers than the king and people, that all who place themselves between, whether they bear the name of aristocrats, ecclesiastics, or what not, are monstrosities, a ruin, a curse to State and country ... all this have I tried to teach you, and the fruit of my teachings has been that you have smuggled yourself among this nobility, which I hate and despise, that you have coveted its empty titles, paraded with its extravagant display, imbibed its prejudices, and now you stand here, in your father's house, with a lie on your lips, and aristocratic vanity in your heart. Go, degenerate son! Aron Bertila is what he has always been—a peasant! He curses and rejects you, apostate!"

With these words the old man turned away, rose and went with a firm step and a high head into the little bed-chamber, leaving Bertel still on his knees in the same place.

"Hear me, father, father!" cried Bertel after him, as he quickly unbuttoned his coat and took out a folded paper; "this paper I have intended to tear to pieces at your feet!"

But the old father did not hear him; the paper fell to the ground, and when Larsson, a moment later, unfolded and read it, he saw it contained a diploma from the Regency in Stockholm, conferring upon Gustaf Bertel, captain of horse in the "life-guards," a patent of nobility, and a coat of arms with the name of Bertelsköld* at Duke Bernhard of Weimar's solicitation.

* Bertila is a Finnish peasant name. Bertel is a burgher name. Bertelsköld is a noble name, indicated by the termination sköld, always a sign of nobility in Sweden and Finland.

While all in the "stuga" were still perfectly stupefied by old Bertila's conduct, three of Fru Marta's soldiers from Korsholm entered in great haste.

"Hullo, boys!" they exclaimed to the hands, "have you seen her? Here is something that will pay. Two hundred silver thalers reward to him who seizes and brings back, alive or dead, Lady Regina von Emmeritz, state prisoner at Korsholm."

At the sound of this name Bertel was aroused from his stupefying grief, sprang up, and seized the speaker by the collar.

"Wretch, what did you say?" he exclaimed.

"Ho, ho, if you please! Be a little more careful when you speak to the people of the Royal Majesty and the Crown. I tell you that the German traitress, the papistical sorceress, Lady von Emmeritz, succeeded in escaping last night from Korsholm castle, and that he who does not help to catch her is a traitor and a..."

The man had no time to finish his speech, before a blow from Bertel's strong arm stretched him at full-length on the floor.

"Ha, my father, you have wished it!" cried the young man, and in a flash was outside the door and in his sleigh, which at the next moment was heard driving off through the raging tempest.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FUGITIVE LADY.

We will now see what has become of Lady Regina, and what has induced her to exchange Fru Marta's tender care for the desperate adventure of fleeing in the middle of winter, through a strange country filled with desolate tracts, where she was profoundly ignorant of the roads and paths, and did not even know how to make herself understood in the language of the people.

We must not overlook the fact that our story is laid in a period when Catholicism and Lutheranism were in the sharpest conflict; when Lutheranism, heated by the violent opposition, was as little inclined to religious tolerance as Catholicism itself. Fru Marta had once for all been possessed by the idea that she was in duty bound to convert Lady Regina to the Lutheran faith, and from this well-meant but futile enterprise, no one could dissuade her. She therefore persisted, in and out of season, to torment the poor girl with her views; sometimes with books, sometimes with exhortations, and at others with persuasions and threats, or promises of freedom; and when Regina refused to read the books, or listen to the preaching, the zealous old lady had prayers read in her prisoner's room every morning and evening, as well as services on Sundays. All these means were thrown away on what Fru Marta considered Regina's stubbornness. The more the former exerted herself, the calmer, colder, and more unyielding became her captive. Regina naturally looked upon herself as a martyr for her faith, and suffered every humiliation with apparent fortitude for the sake of the holy cause.

But within the young girl's veins fermented the hot southern blood, and it was with great difficulty that she could always appear calm on the surface. There were times when Regina would have blown up the whole of Korsholm, if it had been in her power. But the old granite walls defied her silent rage, and flight finally became her only method of escape from the persecution. Night and day she pondered over it; and at last she discovered a means of eluding Fru Marta's vigilance.

In Kajaneborg castle was then confined the celebrated and unfortunate Johannes Messenius, who in his youth had been educated by the Jesuits in Braunsberg, and chosen by them to become the apostle of Catholicism in Sweden. Imprisoned for his lampoons and conspiracies in the interest of Sigismund's party, he had now for nineteen years, under hard treatment, sat there like a mole in his hole, when the report of his learning, his misfortunes, and his Popish sentiments reached Lady Regina in her prison. From this moment some bold plans began to ferment in the young girl's mind.

One day, about New Year's time, a wandering German quack came to Korsholm with his medicine-chest on his back, just like peddling Jews at a later date.* Such doctors and apothecaries combined in one individual did a lucrative business at the expense of the common people, and were frequently consulted even by the upper classes, for in the whole country there was not a single regular physician, and only one apothecary in Abo; and even this one was not well stocked. No wonder, then, that our man found enough to do, even at Korsholm, what with pains, stomach-aches, and gout; nay, Fru Marta, who, every time she had thrashed her male servants, complained of colic and shortness of breath, received the foreign doctor with very good will. In a few days the latter was quite at home, and thus it fell out that he was called in to prescribe for Lady Regina, who was suffering from a severe headache.

* It was peculiar that the surgeon always spoke of quacks with great contempt, although he had himself travelled about with a medicine chest on his back.

This time, Fru Marta's usual perspicacity deserted her. Two days afterwards the young lady, old Dorthe, and the quack doctor were all missing. A grating which had been broken off from the outside, and a rope ladder, made it certain that the quack had been instrumental in procuring for the prisoner a free passage over wall and ramparts. Fru Marta forgot both her colic and shortness of breath, from sheer amazement and anger, stirred up the castle and the town, and immediately dispatched her soldiers in all directions to capture the fugitives. It will soon be seen how far she succeeded.

Let us now return for a moment to Bertel, whom we find driving ahead in the stormy night, attended by the faithful Pekka, and with a heart full of the most conflicting feelings. The faithful attendant could not understand the enormous folly of leaving a cheerful fireside and good wholesome porridge, for snow-drifts and wolves in the wild woods, as soon as they had arrived. Neither did Bertel comprehend it himself. On returning to the north, by way of Tornel, on a furlough from Germany, while the army lay in winter quarters, he had hurried through Storkyro to Vasa, which was his secret destination. And now he had met in one place a father's anger, and in the other the empty walls, where she had been, but was no longer. Regina had disappeared without leaving a trace.

"Where shall I drive?" asked Pekka monotonously and gruffly, when they entered the broad highway.

"Wherever you like," answered his master just as testily.

Pekka turned his horses towards Vasa, about twenty miles away. Bertel noticed this.

"Ass!" he cried, "have I not ordered you to drive north?"

"North!" repeated Pekka mechanically, and with a heavy sigh turned his horses towards Ny-Karleby, to which town it was quite forty miles. At that time they had no regular stations, with horses provided for the accommodation of travellers. But there were farms at intervals, where all who travelled on Government business could reckon on finding horses, while other travellers were obliged to bargain as best they could.

The parsonages were the usual stopping-places for the night, and always had a room in order in an out-building, where beds of straw and a table with cold food stood hospitably prepared for travellers.

It was, therefore, quite natural that Pekka, with his mind still full of the porridge-kettle, ventured to ask as a further question whether they would spend the night at Wort parsonage.

"Drive to Ylihärmä," answered the captain of horse, provoked, and wrapping himself up in his long sheepskin cloak, for the night wind was icy cold.

"The devil take me if I understand the pranks of these noblemen!" murmured Pekka to himself, as he turned off into the narrow village road, which from Storkyro leads northward towards Lappo parish.

Here the snow had drifted several feet high between the fences, and the travellers could only advance step by step. After an hour's efforts the horses were completely worn out, and stopped every few paces.

Bertel, absorbed in his thoughts, was scarcely conscious of it. They had left Kyro's wide plains behind them, and were now in the midst of Lappo's thick woods. The silence of the wilderness, interrupted by the wailing of the storm, surrounded the travellers on all sides, and as far as the eye could reach there were no traces of human habitations.

Pekka had for a time walked by the side of the sleigh, and with his broad shoulders lifted it up again, when it sank so deep in the snow that the horses' strength was insufficient to move it from the spot.

Finally his sinewy arms also refused their services, and the sleigh stopped right in the midst of a mountain of snow.

"Well!" exclaimed Bertel impatiently, "what is the matter?"

"Nothing," replied Pekka stolidly, "except that we need neither priest nor undertaker to find us a grave."

"How far is it from here to the nearest farm?"

"Between six and seven miles, I think."

"Do you not see something resembling a light, far away there in the woods?"

"Yes, yes, it looks like it..."

"Unharness the horses and let us ride there."

"No, dear master, it is of no use; these woods have been fearfully haunted, that I know of old, ever since the peasants beat the bailiff to death during the Club War, and burned his house and his innocent children."

"Nonsense! I tell you that we will ride there."

"It is all the same to me."

In a few moments the horses were taken out of the traces, and the two travellers pushed on in the direction of the light, which sometimes disappeared and then again shone between the snow-covered pines.

"But tell me, Pekka," resumed Bertel, "what is the story about this wilderness? I remember that I often heard them speak of it in my childhood."

"Yes, yes, your mother was born here."

"There used to be quite a little colony in this wood."

"Yes, indeed, it was many hundreds of acres in extent. The bailiffs had laid it all out for miles, as far back as Gustaf Vasa's time; and here many hundreds of tons of grain have been grown, so father has told me; and the noble bailiff had built a fine house here, and lived like a prince in the wilderness; and then, as I told you, the peasants came and set fire to the place in the night-time, destroying both people and cattle, with the exception of the young 'Lady,' whom your father saved and afterwards took for his wife. It is very certain that he had a finger in that pie."

"And so the farm was never built up again."

"You may depend upon it that the fields were a fat slice, and so there were plenty of people ready to move here and bid defiance to the devil. But the old Evil One was too artful for them; he began to make such a rumpus here with supernatural performances day and night, so that no one was sure of his life, much less of his sinful soul. If they sat in their homes, the chairs were pulled from under them, and the porridge-bowl rolled of its own accord down on the floor; the stones were torn from the walls and were showered around people's ears. If they went out in the woods they were no better off; they had to keep a sharp look-out that the trees did not come crashing down upon their heads, although the weather might be perfectly quiet, and that the ground did not open under their feet, and draw them down into a bottomless pit. And when I think that we are now travelling through the same woods ... Oh, oh, I am sinking..."

"You fool, it is only the pure snow!—and then you say people could not stand it any longer?"

"They all moved away, so that there was not even a cat left, except an old cottager, but I suppose he died long ago. The whole settlement was again deserted, the ditches filled up, the fields became covered with moss, and the pine-woods spread over the former grain lands. It is now forty years since that time..."

And Pekka, who was not in the habit of making long speeches, seemed astonished at his own loquacity, and came to a sudden stop as he reigned in his horse.

"What is it now?" asked Bertel impatiently.

"I don't see a glimpse of the light."

"Neither do I. It is hidden by the trees."

"No, dear master, it is not concealed by the trees; it has sunk into the earth after decoying us here into the depths of the forest. Did not I tell you that it would be so? We shall never get out of this alive."

"For the devil's sake ride on and do not stop, else both man and beast will stiffen with the cold. It seems to me I see something like a hut over there."

"Fine hut; it is nothing but a granite rock with grey sides, from which the wind has blown away the snow. It is all over with us."

"Hold your tongue, and ride on! Here we have an open space with young woods; I caught a glimpse of something there between the snow-drifts."

"All the saints be with us! We are now on the very spot where the house stood. Do you not see the old fire-place sticking out through the snow? Not a step farther, master!"

"I am not mistaken ... it is the hut."

Bertel and his companion found themselves on very rough ground, where the horses stumbled at every step over large stones, or sank into great hollows covered with snow. Deep snow-drifts and fallen trees made it worse still, as if to obstruct the passage to a dilapidated peasant's hut, which by design or chance was hidden behind two spreading firs, with branches hanging to the ground. The only window of the hut had a shutter, which was at one moment blown open by the wind and then slammed to again, thus causing the light within to show itself and disappear by turns.

Bertel dismounted from his horse, tied it to a branch of the fir, and approached the window to throw a glance inside. A secret hope gave wings to his feet. He took it for granted that unless the fugitives had gone in a northerly direction, they could not have followed the main highway, but had sought to escape their pursuers on the side roads. But in this part of the plain of East Bothnia hundreds of small roads crossed each other at that time, all leading to the new settlements in the East. Who told him that the fugitives would select just this road?

Still his heart beat faster when he approached the window. Of the four small panes two were of horn, which was formerly used in default of glass; one of them was broken and stopped up with moss; only the fourth was of glass, but so covered with ice and snow that at first nothing could be seen. Bertel breathed on the glass, but found to his vexation that the frost on the inside defied his curiosity. Just then his horse neighed.

It seemed ridiculous to Bertel to stand spying into a poor peasant's hut. He was already on the point of knocking at the door, when at that instant a shadow obscured the light, and the frost on the inside of the glass was quickly melted by the breath of a human being, as eager to look out as he was to look in. Bertel was soon able to discern a face with burning eyes, which stared out close to the window, to discover the cause of a horse's neighing so late at night in the wilderness.

The sight of this face had the effect of an electric shock upon the inquisitive captain. With his thoughts on the beautiful Regina, Bertel had expected a sight not involving so great a contrast. But instead he beheld a corpse-like face surrounded by a black tight-fitting, leather hood, and this dark frame made the pale face seem still paler.

Bertel had seen these features before, and when he searched his memory, the picture of a terrible night in the Bavarian woods rose before his mental vision. Involuntarily he drew back, and hesitated for a moment. This motion was observed by Pekka, who had remained on his horse so as to be ready to fly.

"Quick, away from here!" he cried. "I have told you that nobody but the devil himself lives in these woods."

"Yes, you are right," said Bertel, now smiling at his own fears, and what he considered to be the offspring of his heated fancy. "If ever the Prince of Darkness has assumed a human form, then he resides in this hut. But that is just the reason why we will look the worthy gentleman in the face, and force him to give us lodgings for the night. Hullo, there! open the door to some travellers."

These words were accompanied by some heavy blows on the door.

CHAPTER IX.
DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA.

After some time the door was opened, and an old man, bent with age, and with snow-white hair, disclosed himself. Accustomed by the right of war to take whatever was necessary, when it was not given voluntarily, Bertel pushed the old man aside and entered the miserable hut without ceremony. To his great astonishment he found it empty. A half burnt "perta,"* stuck in between the bricks of the fire-place, threw a flickering light around this abode of poverty. There was no door except the entrance; no living being besides the old man and a large woolly dog, which lay outstretched on the hearth, and showed his teeth to the uninvited guest.

* A thin stick of pine-wood, a yard long and an inch thick, which the peasants sometimes use instead of candles.

"Where is the man in the black leather hood, who was here a moment ago?" asked Bertel sharply.

"God bless your grace," answered the old man humbly and evasively, "who could be here but your grace?"

"Out with the truth! Somebody must be hidden here. Under the bed ... no. Behind the oven ... no. And yet you have just had a large fire kindled in the fire-place. What? I believe it is put out with water? Answer."

"It is so cold, your grace, and the hut is full of cracks..."

Bertel's aroused suspicions were not so easily dispelled. His eyes searched every part of the room, and soon discovered a little object which had fallen under a bench. It was a fine and soft lady's glove, lined with flannel.

"Will you now confess, old wretch?" burst out the excited young man.

The old man seemed dismayed, but only for a moment. He suddenly changed his manner, nodded slyly, and pointed to the corner nearest the oven. Bertel followed the hint ... took a few steps ... and suddenly felt himself precipitated downwards. He had fallen into the open hole of a cellar, whose entrance had been hidden by the heavy shadow of the fire-place. Instantly a trap-door was closed over the opening, and he heard the rattling of an iron hook, which secured the trap and deprived him of all chance of opening the door from below.

Bertel had fallen into one of those places under the floor in which poor people keep roots and home-brewed beer. The cellar was not deep, nor his fall dangerous, but, nevertheless, Bertel's anger was quite natural. The little glove had betrayed the whole story. She must be here; she, the beautiful, proud, unfortunate princess, whom he had so long adored in secret. Perhaps she had fallen into the hands of cruel robbers. And just now, when he was near to her after years of longing, and when, perhaps, she most needed his help and protection, he had been caught in a miserable trap; imprisoned in a rat-hole, more miserable than the hut itself, of which the floor this moment served him for a ceiling. In vain did he try to lift up the planks of the floor by the strength of his shoulders; they were as inexorable as the fate which had so long mocked his dearest hopes.

Then he heard the footsteps of several persons passing over the floor overhead. Then all was silent.

Pekka was now Bertel's only hope, but the former had not dared to enter the hut. Nothing was heard of him, however, and three or four hours passed in torturing suspense, increased by the prospect of perishing from hunger and cold. Then steps again sounded overhead; the iron hook was unfastened, and the trap-door raised. Half-frozen, Bertel crawled up from the damp hole, in the firm belief that Pekka had at last spied out his prison. He was met instead by the old man with the snow-white hair, who, humble and submissive as before, offered his hand to help him up.

The enraged young warrior seized him by his bony shoulders, and proceeded to catechise him in a thorough manner.

"Wretch," he exclaimed, "are you tired of life, or do you not know what you are doing, dotard? What hinders me from crushing your miserable carcase against the walls of your own hut?"

The old man looked at him with an unchanging countenance.

"Do so, Bertila's son," he replied; "kill your mother's old faithful servant if you wish; why should he live any longer?"

"My mother's old servant, do you say?"

"I am the last survivor of all those who formerly inhabited this fertile region, which is now a wilderness. It was I who said to Aron Bertila, when my master's house was destroyed in blood and ashes: 'Save my young mistress.' And Bertila did it; cursed is he and blessed at the same time! He carried my lovely young mistress out of the flames, and she, a noble maiden, became the haughty peasant's humble wife."

"But are you mad, old man? If you are, as you say, my mother's old servant, why did you shut me up in that damned hole? You must admit that your friendship is of a strange kind."

"Kill me, sir. I am ninety years of age. Kill me, I am a Catholic!"

"You! Well, by my sword now I begin to understand you."

"I am the last Catholic in this country. I belong to King John's and King Sigismund's time. I am one of the four who buried the last nun in Nadendal's cloister. For twenty years I have not heard mass, or been sprinkled with holy water. But all the saints be praised, an hour before your arrival, I had eaten of the holy wafer."

"A monk has been in your hut?"

"Yes, sir, one of ours."

"And with him a young girl and her old waiting-maid? Answer."

"Yes, sir, they were in his company."

"And on my arrival you concealed them..."

"In the garret. Yes, your grace."

"Then you decoyed me into that miserable rat-hole, while you allowed the women and the monk to escape."

"I do not deny that it is so."

"And what do you think that your reward will be?"

"Anything—death, perhaps."

"I will spare your life on one condition: you shall show me the way the fugitives have taken."

"My life; I told you that I was ninety years old."

"And you do not fear the torture?"

"The saints be praised, if I was worthy of so great an honour."

"But if I burn you alive in your own hut?"

"The holy martyrs have been burnt at the stake."

"No, old man, I am not an executioner. I have learnt in the service of my king to revere faithfulness." And Bertel pressed the old man's hand with emotion.

"But I will tell you one thing," he continued, "you think that I have come to take the fugitives back to their prison. It is not so. I give you my word of honour, that I will defend Lady Regina's freedom with my life's blood, and do all in my power to favour her flight. Will you now tell me which way she has gone?"

"No, your grace," said the calm old man; "the young lady is under the protection of the saints, and a wise man's guidance. You are hot-blooded and young, and would bring them all to ruin. Turn back, you will not find any trace of the fugitives."

"Bull-head," muttered Bertel indignantly. "Farewell, I shall get along without your help."

"Remain here quietly until to-morrow, your grace. To-night you are at liberty to walk, if you choose, six miles through the high snow-drifts, to the nearest farm. To-morrow you can ride comfortably."

"Wretch! you have sent my horses away?"

"Yes, your grace ... you must be hungry. Here is a kettle with boiled turnips; may they be to your taste."

"Ah!" thought Bertel to himself, as he impatiently paced the floor, "I would not let Larsson see me at this moment for ten bottles of Rhine wine. He would certainly compare me to the wandering knight of La Mancha, who, on the way to his Dulcinea, fell into the most peculiar adventures. How shall I get away from here through these terrible snow-drifts?"

"But," he added aloud, "I have an idea; I will try if one of the greatest amusements of my youth cannot serve me a good turn now. Old man, where do you keep your snow-shoes?"

"My snow-shoes?" replied the old man, confused. "I have none."

"You have, I see it in your face. No Finn in the wilderness is without snow-shoes. Out with them, quick!"

And without heeding the old man, Bertel pushed open the door which led to the garret, and drew out a fine pair of snow-shoes.

"Well, old friend," exclaimed the young cavalier, "what do you think of my horses? ... I call them mine, for I will bet anything that you will sell them to me for three hard silver thalers: swifter steeds have seldom hurried over high snow-drifts. If you have any greeting for the monk or Lady Regina, I will take it with pleasure."

"Do not go alone into the wilderness," said the old man. "There is neither track or path; the woods extend for miles, and are filled with wolves. It will be certain death to you."

"You are wrong, my friend," replied Bertel. "If I am not mistaken, there are traces in two directions: one from my horses, the other from the fugitives. Tell me, did they go in a sleigh, or on horseback?"

"I think they went on horseback."

"Then I am certain they drove. You are a finished rogue. But I forgive you for the sake of your excellent snow-shoes. Farewell, in a couple of hours I will find those whom I seek."

With these words Bertel hurried out.

It was yet early in the morning, a short time before sunrise. But fortunately the storm had ceased, the sky was clear, and the winter stars twinkled brightly in the blue firmament. The cold had increased, and a sharp frost had covered all the branches and snowdrifts with those ice diamonds, which at once dazzle and charm the wanderer's eye. The sight of woods and snow on a starry winter morning gives the Northerner a peculiar exhilarating feeling. There is in this scene a grandeur, a splendour, a purity, a freshness, which carries him back to the impressions of his childhood and the brilliant illusions of youth. There is nothing to cramp the heart, or paralyze the soaring imagination; all is there so vast, so solemn, so free. One might say that nature in this deep silence of winter and night is dead, and yet she lives, warm and rich, in the wanderer's heart.

It is as if she had in this little spot, this solitary place in the wilderness, compressed all her throbbing life, only to let it exist all the more beautifully in the midst of silence, stillness, and the radiance of the stars.

Bertel also experienced this feeling of freshness and life. He was still young and open to every impression. As he hastened along, light as the wind, between the trees and snow-drifts, he felt like a child. It seemed to him that he was again the boy who flew over the snow on Storkyro plains to spread his snares for the black-cock in the woods. It was true that he was a little unsteady in the beginning for lack of practice, and the snow-shoes slid merrily down the icy slopes; occasionally he made false pushes, and sometimes stumbled, but he soon regained his former skill, and stood firm on the uneven ground.

Now it was necessary to find the traces of the fugitives, and this was not easy. Bertel had wandered about for more than an hour in the direction of Ylihärmä, but had not discovered the slightest sign. The last outbreak of the storm had destroyed all indications; one could only see the fresh track of the wolf, where he had just trotted along, and now and then a frightened bird flew between the branches which were heavy with snow. Want of sleep, hunger, and fatigue, exhausted the young man's strength. The cold increased as sunrise approached, and covered his moustache and plumed hat with frost.

At last he saw on a wood-path, which the broad pines had shielded from the blast, fresh traces of runners and horses' feet. Bertel followed these with renewed energy; at times the tracks were lost in the snow, and then reappeared where the road was sheltered. The sun rose deep red in the south-east over the tops of the trees. The day was cold and clear. In every direction nothing was to be seen but trees and snow-drifts, but far away in the north a little column of smoke rose towards the morning sky. Bertel aimed at this point. The snow-shoes regained their speed, the road seemed smoother, and at last the weary adventurer reached a solitary farmhouse by the side of the high road.

The first person he encountered was Pekka, who was going to feed his horses.

"Scoundrel!" cried Bertel, with glad surprise, "who sent you here?"

"Who?" repeated Pekka, equally delighted and astonished. "Well, I shall tell you that the devil did it. I waited and waited outside that accursed old shanty in the woods until my eyes and feet became heavy together, where I sat in the snow-drift. After a little while I was aroused by the neighing of horses. And then I saw a sleigh just like ours harnessed to two horses, dashing away along the road. It is either my master or the devil. It is all the same to me. I will follow him, I said. Then I climbed up again on the horse's back. I was so hungry that it is a shame to speak of it; but I went after him. Finally the horse became tired and I lost sight of the sleigh; and thanked are both Lutheran and Catholic saints that I came here to the farm and got a good bowl of porridge. For was it not at Lützen and Nördlingen ... it is damned cold at Ylihärmä, that is sure."

"Good," said Bertel, "they shall not escape us. But do you know one thing, Pekka: there are moments when hunger and want of sleep are even stronger than love itself. Come, let us go in."

Bertel entered, and drank a bowl of boiled milk, and threw himself, overcome by fatigue, on a straw bed in the "stuga." Here we will leave our wandering knight for a couple of hours in peace.

CHAPTER X.
KAJANEBORG.

Far away in the North roar the mighty waters of the sea under vaults of ice; the fors never freezes, the green of the pine never withers, and the grey rocks, which confine the foaming floods in narrow ravines, never shake. Here the powers of nature have pursued their incessant warfare for centuries without rest, without reconciliation; the flood never tires of battling with the rocks, and these persist in resisting the stream; the hills never seem to grow old, and the immense morasses defy cultivation; the frosty transparent atmosphere quivers as of old in the northern light, and the winter sky looks down with its imperturbable, majestic calm upon the scattered huts on the banks of the streams.

This is the home of night and terror; this is the shadow of Finnish poetry's golden pictures. Here the light-shunning Black Art spins its webs around human beliefs; here are the graves of heroes; here the last giants spent their rude strength in the mountain wilderness; here stood Hüsis ancient fortress, of which the steps were each six feet in height; here the spirit of the middle ages brooded over its darkest thoughts; here it receded, step by step, before the light of a newer time, and here it has bled in its impotent rage; heathenism, fallen from its greatness, steals outlawed from place to place, in the sheep's clothing of Christendom, going restlessly around the country, and performing its miserable mummeries in churchyards at night.

Before the great northern waters, irritated by their battles in hundreds of forssar* go to seek a brief repose in Uleä Sea, they once more pour out their anger into the two mighty waterfalls of Koivukoski and Ämmä, near the little Kajana. Like two immense surfs the torrents throw themselves headlong down the narrow pass, and so violent is their fall that human daring, accustomed to struggle with nature and conquer in the end, has here stopped with dismay and acknowledged its powerlessness. Up to the latest times the boats which have steered down the forssar in their course towards Uleäborg, have always been obliged to land here and be drawn by horses through the streets of Kajana.**

* Plural of fors.

** After the surgeon's time, a lock was completed here at each fall, and the boats now continue on their way without much delay.

In the stream, right between the two falls, Koivukoski and Ämmä, lies a flat rock, to which bridges are attached from both sides. Here stand the grey walls of an ancient fortress, now in ruins, and constantly bathed by the waves of the flood. This fortress of Kajaneborg was founded in 1607, during Carl IX.'s time, as a protection against Russian invasion. Perhaps the time may come in our stories when we shall speak more of it.

It is now 1635, and the castle stands in its original strength. Its form resembles an arrow with the point turned towards the stream. Unless famine occurs, or the enemy can bring heavy artillery to the heights, it is considered impregnable. But how can a hostile army find any road to Kajaneborg? In the immense wilderness all around there is not a single road where a wheel can run. In summer the traveller follows the narrow paths, and in winter the Laplander, with his reindeer and sleigh, drives over the frozen lakes.

It is winter; a thick crust of ice on the shores and over the walls of the castle shows that the cold has been severe, though it has not been able to bind the fors in its rapid course.

Some soldiers, clad in sheep-skin jackets, with the fur side turned inwards, are busy drawing home wood from the adjacent forest. There is peace in the land, the drawbridge is down, and horses' feet thunder over the bridge. Then a violent squabble arises in the castle yard. An old woman, tall in stature, with rather disagreeable features, has taken possession of one of the loads of wood, and pushed away the soldiers, while she picks up as many pieces as she is able to carry, and commands another younger woman to do likewise.

The soldiers utter coarse oaths, but the woman with the keen eyes does not deign to reply.

A sub-officer, drawn there by the noise, informs himself of the cause, then addresses the woman with hard words, and orders her to return the wood she has taken. The woman refuses to obey; the sub-officer endeavours to use force; the woman plants herself back to the wall, raises a small log of wood in the air, and threatens to break the head of the first man who approaches her. The soldiers swear and laugh; the sub-officer hesitates; the old woman's courage holds them all in check.

Then an elderly man appears on the steps, to whom all give way with reverence. It is Governor Wernstedt. As soon as the old woman sees him, she leaves her hostile attitude, and relates with a torrent of words all the injustice she has suffered.

"Yes, gracious Excellency," she said, "that is the way they dare to treat a man who is the pride and ornament of Sweden. It is not sufficient to shut him up in this miserable out-of-the-way hole, but they let him freeze to death in the bargain. What wood have they given us? Great God! nothing but green and rotten chunks, which fill the room with smoke, and do not give out heat enough to thaw the ink on his table. But I tell you, Excellency, that I, Lucia Grothusen, do not intend to be imposed upon any longer. This wood is good, and I take it, as you see, Excellency, right before the face of these vagabonds, who deserve to all hang upon the highest pine in the Paldamo forest. Pack yourselves off, you lazy, good-for-nothing rascals, and look out how you act before me and the Governor. The wood is mine, and that is all to be said about it."

The Governor smiled.

"Let her keep the wood," he said to the soldiers, "or else there will be no peace in the castle. And you, Lucia, I warn you to hold your wicked tongue, which has already done so much mischief; otherwise it may happen that I shall again put you and your husband in that basement you know of, where Erik Hare kept you, and where the stream rolls right under the floor. Is this the thanks I get for the mild treatment I have bestowed upon you, that you are eternally exciting quarrels in the castle? The day before yesterday you gave rein to your tongue, because you did not receive enough soap for your washing; yesterday you took a leg of mutton by force from my kitchen, and to-day you make a noise about the wood. Take care, Lucia; my patience may be exhausted."

The woman looked the Governor right in the face.

"Your patience!" she repeated. "How long do you think that mine will last. I have stayed now nearly nineteen years in this owl's nest. For nineteen long years has it cast a stain upon Sweden that its greatest man is confined here like a criminal! ... Mark what I say: Sweden's greatest man; for the day will arrive when you, and I, and all these souls of lard, all these wandering ale-jugs, will be food for worms, and no more thought of than the hogs you killed to-day; but the glorious name of Johannes Messenius will shine for all time. Your patience! Have I, then, had none—I who in these long weary years have been fighting with you for a bit of bread, for firewood, for a pillow for this great man, whom you abuse? I, the only one who has kept his frail body alive, and strengthened his soul for the great work which he has now accomplished? Do you realise what it means to suffer as I have; to be snatched away from one's children, to go about with despair in the heart, and a smile on the lips, so as to seem to have a hope when none remains? ... Do you know, your Excellency, what all this means? And you stand there and talk about your patience!"

The soldiers' loud laughter all at once interrupted the voluble old woman. She now perceived for the first time that the Governor had chosen the wisest course, and gone his way. It was not the first time that Lucia Grothusen had put the commander of a fortress to flight. She felt able to drive a whole garrison to the woods. But it vexed her that she could not fully relieve her heart. She threw a stick of wood at the nearest and worst of her mockers, and then hurried with the wood in her arms, to reach a low back door. The soldier, struck in the leg, seized the stick with an oath, and flung it in his turn after the old woman. Lucia, hit in the heel, uttered a cry of pain and anger ... and then she disappeared through the door, followed by the soldiers' loud laughter.

During this scene of self-sacrifice on one side, and rudeness on the other, a group of strangers had arrived over the left castle bridge, and asked to be conducted to the Governor.

The soldiers regarded them with curiosity. They wore the common garb of peasants, but their whole appearance betrayed their foreign origin. An old man, with dark squinting eyes and sallow complexion, came first; his face partly hidden under a woolly cap of dog-skin, which with its ear-flaps covered the greater portion of the head. After him followed a young woman in a striped home-spun skirt, and a tight-fitting jacket of new and fine white sheep-skin. Her face, also, is almost entirely concealed under a hood of coarse felt, bordered with squirrel-skin, the fine fur of which is covered with frost. One only saw a pair of beautiful dark eyes of unusual brilliancy, which peeped forth from the hood. The third of the company was a little old woman, so wrapped up in furs that her short figure had widened out into the shape of a well-stuffed cushion.

All these persons were conducted to the Governor. The man in the dog-skin cap showed a passport, according to which, Albertus Simonis, in his royal Majesty's service, was appointed army physician to the troops which were to go to Germany the following spring, and was now, with his wife and daughter, on a journey from Dantzig to Stockholm, by way of the north road through Wiborg and Kajana. The Governor closely examined both the document and the man, and seemed to find a satisfactory conclusion to his survey. Then he sent the travellers to a room in the east wing of the castle, and gave orders for them to be provided with the necessary refreshments after such a long journey in the severe cold.

CHAPTER XI.
THE PRISONER OF STATE.

The room which we now enter is situated in the south tower of the castle, and is not very inviting. It is large and dark. Although with a sunny aspect, the narrow window, with its thick iron gratings, only admits a few of the winter's day sunbeams. A large open fire-place, with a granite hearth, occupies one corner of the room; a rough unpainted bed, a couple of benches, two chairs, a clothes-chest, a large table under the window, and a high cupboard next to it, make up the furniture of the room. All these things have a new appearance, which to some degree reconciles the eye to their coarseness.

But the room is a curious combination of kitchen and study. Learning has established its abode at the upper end nearest the window. The table is adorned with ink spots, and covered with old yellow manuscripts and large folios of parchments. The door of the cupboard is open, and shows its use as a library. The lower part of the room, near the fire-place, has a different appearance. Here stands a wash-tub by a sack of flour; a kettle is waiting to receive some dried pike and bits of salt pork, and leaves room for a bucket of water, and a shelf filled with coarse stone dishes.

Such was the habitation which Governor Wernstedt had assigned to the state prisoner, Johannes Messenius, his wife, and servant, instead of the horrible place where Messenius' tormentor, old Erik Hare, for so many years confined these unfortunate beings. The room was at least high and dry above the ground, and its furniture was likewise a friendly gift from the Governor. Messenius occupied the upper part, and the women of his household the lower.

By the large ink-spotted table sat a grey-haired man, with his body wrapped in furs, his feet clad with reindeer boots, and his head covered with a thick woollen cap. One who had seen this man in the days of his prosperity, when he occupied the rostrum in Upsala "Consistorium," or proud as a king on his throne, exercising sole control over all the historical treasures of the Swedish state archives, would scarcely now recognise in this withered form, bent by age and misfortune, the man with the arrogant mind, the opponent of Rudbeck and Tegel, the learned, gifted, haughty, Jesuit conspirator, Johannes Messenius.

But if one looked deep into those keen, restless eyes, which seemed constantly trying to penetrate the future as they had done the past, and read the words which his shaking hand had just penned—words full of egotism even to presumption—then one could divine that within this decayed tenement toiled a soul unbroken by time and events, proud as it had always been, ambitious as it could never cease to be.

The old man's gaze was fixed upon the paper long after he had laid down his pen.

"Yes," he said thoughtfully and reflectively, "so shall it be. During my lifetime they have trampled me like a worm in the dust; once I am dead they will know upon whom they have trodden. Gloria, gloria in excelsis! The day will arrive, even if it be a century hence, when the miserable prisoner who, now forgotten by the whole world, pines away in the wilderness, shall with admiration and respect be called the father of Swedish history....

"Then," he continued with a bitter smile, "they can do nothing more for me. Then I shall be dead ... Ah, it is strange! the dead man, whose bones have long mouldered in the grave, lives in his works; his spirit goes quickening and ennobling through the ages. All that he has endured while he lived, all the ignominy, all the persecutions, all the prison gratings are forgotten; they exist no longer, provided his name still shines like a star through the night of time, and posterity, with its short memory and its ingratitude, says, with thoughtless admiration, he was a great man!"

During this soliloquy the old woman, whose acquaintance we made in the castle yard, entered the room. She carefully opened the door, and walked on tip-toe, as if afraid of waking a sleeping babe. Then she carefully put down the wood she carried in her arms. A little noise, however, was unavoidable; the old man at the table, startled from his thoughts, began to upbraid the intruder:

"Woman!" he said, "how dare you disturb me! Have I not told you iterum iterumque, that you shall take away your penates procul a parnasso? Do you understand it ... lupa?"

"Dear Messenius, I am only bringing you a little wood. You have been so cold all these days. Do not be angry now. I shall make the room nice and warm for you; it is excellent wood..."

"Quid miki tecum. Go to the dogs. You vex me, woman. You are, as the late King Gustaf always said, Messenü mala herba; my wormwood, my nettle."

Lucia Grothusen was an extremely quick-tempered woman, angry and quarrelsome with the whole world; but this time she kept quite still. How strangely her domestic position had altered! She had always idolized her husband, but as long as he was in the full strength of his manhood and prosperity, she had bent his unquiet, vacillating spirit like a reed under her will. All that time the feared and learned Messenius was held in complete subjection. Now the rôles were changed. As his physical strength declined, indicating more and more that he approached the end of his life, his wife's idolatrous love came into conflict with her masterful disposition, and finally produced the extraordinary result of reducing this character to humble submission. She nursed him as a mother nurses her sick child, for fear of losing him. She bore everything patiently, and never had an angry word in reply to his querulous remarks. Even on this occasion, only a slight trembling of the lips gave evidence of the effort it cost her to check her anger.

"Never mind," she said kindly, as she went a few steps nearer, "do not feel angry about it, my dear, because it injures your health. I will not do it again; next time I will lay a mat under the wood, so that it will not disturb you. Now I will cook you a splendid leg of mutton for supper ... Believe me, I had trouble enough to get it. I almost had to take it by force from the Governor's kitchen."

"What, woman! have you dared to beg beneficia from tyrants? By Jupiter, do you think me a dog, that I should eat the crumbs from their tables? And then you limp. Why do you do that? Answer me; why do you limp? I suppose you have been running around like a gossiping old woman, and tripped on the stairs."

"Do I limp?" repeated Lucia, with a forced smile. "I really believe I have hurt my foot ... Ungrateful!" added she silently to herself; "it is for your sake that I suffer."

"Go your way, and let me finish my epitaph."

But Lucia did not go; she came closer to him. Her eyes filled with tears, and she folded both her arms around the old man's neck.

"Your epitaph!" she repeated in a voice so mild that one would never have expected it from those withered lips, used so very often for hard words and invective only.

"Oh, my God!" she continued in a low tone, "shall, then, all that is great and glorious on earth finally become dust? But that day is still far distant, my friend; yes, it must be so. Let me see the epitaph of the great Johannes Messenius!"

"Certainly," said the old man, consoled by her sincere flattery, "you are decidedly the true persona executrix who ought to read my epitaphium, as you are also the one who will have to engrave it on my tombstone. Look, my dear; what do you think of this?

"Here lie the bones of Doctoris Johannes Messenii. His soul is in God's kingdom, but his fame is all over the world!"

"Never," said Lucia, weeping, "have truer words been placed over a great man's grave. But let us say no more about it. Let us speak of your great work, your Scondia. Do you know I have a feeling that its glory will in a short time prepare freedom for you..."

"Freedom!" repeated Messenius, in a melancholy tone. "Yes, you are right; the freedom of the grave to decay wherever one chooses."

"No," replied Lucia with eagerness and enthusiasm, "you shall yet receive the honour that is due to you. They will read your great Scondia illustrata, they will have it printed ... with your name in gilded letters on the title-page ... the whole world will say, full of admiration: 'never has his equal existed in the North'!"

"And never will exist again!" added Messenius, with confidence. "Oh! who will restore me my freedom—freedom that I may behold my work and triumph over my enemies. Hear me, Lord, I stretch out my hands before Thy face. Save me from misery, for Thou hast said: 'I will prostrate thine enemies, to be trampled under thy feet.' Who will give me freedom—freedom and ten years of life to witness the fruits of my labour?"

"I," answered a muffled voice at the lower end of the room.

At the sound of this voice both Messenius and his wife looked around with superstitious terror. The loneliness of the prison, and the associations of this wild country, which in all ages has been the fruitful soil of superstition, had in both increased the belief in superhuman things to a perfect conviction. More than once had Messenius' brooding spirit been on the point of plunging into the enticing labyrinth of the Kabala and practical Magic; but his zealous labours and his wife's religious exhortations had held him back. Now came an unexpected answer to his question ... from Heaven or the abyss, no matter which, but an answer, nevertheless—a straw for his drowning hopes.

The short winter day had drawn to a close, and twilight already spread its shadows over that part of the room which lay nearest the door. From this obscurity advanced a man, in whose sallow features one recognised the same person who two hours before had gained an entrance to the castle, under the name of Albertus Simonis. He had probably, in his capacity of physician, obtained permission to see the prisoner, for the whole medical faculty of the castle consisted of a barber, who practised chirurgery, and an old soldier's widow, whose skill in curing internal diseases was highly commended, especially when it was assisted by luvut, or incantations, which, although forbidden by the Church, were still used in the vapour-baths as powerful magical aids.

"Pax vobiscum!" said the stranger with a certain solemnity, and coming nearer the window.

"May the Lord be with you also!" answered Messenius, in the same tone, and with curiosity mingled with inquietude.

"May the woman's tongue be far from the consultation!" continued the stranger also in Latin.

Lucia, in whose youth the daughters of learned men knew Latin better than those of the nineteenth century read French, did not wait for a further reminder, and left the room with an inquisitive glance at the mysterious stranger.

Messenius made a sign to his visitor to take a seat near him. The whole conversation was conducted in Latin.

"Receive my greeting, great man, whom misfortune has only been able to elevate!" began the stranger, with artful discrimination attacking Messenius' weakest point.

"Be welcome, you who do not disdain to visit the forsaken!" replied Messenius with unusual courtesy.

"Do you recognise me, Johannes Messenius?" said the stranger, as he let the light fall on his pale face.

"It seems to me that I have seen your face before," replied the prisoner hesitatingly; "but it must have been a long time ago."

"Do you remember a boy in Braunsberg, some years younger than yourself, who was educated with you in the school of the holy fathers, and afterwards in your company visited Rome and Ingolstadt?"

"Yes, I remember ... a boy who gave great promise of one day becoming a pillar of the church ... Hieronymus Mathiæ."

"I am Hieronymus Mathiæ."

Messenius felt a shudder run through his frame. Time, the experiences of life, and the soul destroying doctrines of the Jesuits, had completely changed the features of the once blooming boy. Pater Hieronymus observed this impression, and hastened to add:

"Yes, my revered friend, thirty-five years' struggle for the welfare of the only saving Church has caused the roses in these cheeks to fade for ever. I have laboured and suffered in these evil times. Like you, great man, but with much lesser genius, I have dug in the vineyard, without any reward for my toil but the prospect of the holy martyr's crown in Paradise. You were very kind to me in my youth; now I will repay it so far as it lies in my power. I will restore you to freedom and life."

"Ah, reverend father," replied the old man, with a deep sigh, "I am not worthy of this; you, the son of the holy Church, extending your hand to me, a poor apostate? You do not know, then, that I have renounced our faith; that I, with my own hand and mouth, have embraced the accursed Lutheran religion, which I abhor in my heart; nay, even in my time persecuted your holy order with several godless libels."

"Why should I not know all this, my honoured friend; have not the great Messenius' work and deeds flown on the wings of fame throughout Germany? But what you have done, has been done as a blind, so as to work in secret for the highest good of our holy Roman Church. Do not the Scriptures teach us to meet craft with craft in these godless times? 'Ye shall be as wily as serpents.' The Holy Virgin will give you her absolution as soon as you have worked for her sake. Yes, esteemed man, even had you seven times abjured your faith, and seven times seventy sinned against all the saints and the dogmas of the Church, it shall all be accounted to you for reward, and not for condemnation, provided you have done it with a mental reservation, and with the design of thereby serving the good cause. Even if your tongue has lied, and your hand killed, it shall be deemed a pious and holy work, when it was for the purpose of bringing back the stray sheep. Courage, great man, I absolve you in the name of the Church."

"Yes, good father, these teachings which the worthy Jesuit fathers, in Braunsberg so eloquently instilled into my young mind, I have faithfully followed in my life. But now, in my old age, it sometimes seems to me as if my conscience raised some opposition in the matter..."

"Temptations of the devil! nothing else. Drive them away!"

"That may well be, pious father! Yes, to calm my conscience, I have written a formal confession, in which I openly declare my profession of the Lutheran faith a hypocritical act, and as openly proclaim my adherence to the Catholic Church."

"Hide this confession, show it not to any mortal eye!" interrupted the Jesuit quickly. "Its time will yet come."

"I do not understand your reasons, pious father."

"Listen attentively to what I have to say! Do you think, old man, that I, without important reasons, have ventured up here in the wilderness, daily exposed to hunger, cold, wild beasts, and the still wilder people in this country, who would burn me alive if they knew who I was, and what I was about? Do you think I would have left the wide field in my native land, had I not hoped to accomplish more here? Well, then, I will briefly explain to you my point ... Can anyone hear us? Perhaps there are private passages in these walls."

"Be sure no mortal can hear us."

"Know, then," continued the Jesuit in a low voice, "that we have again before us the never-abandoned plan of bringing heretic Sweden back to the bosom of the Roman Church. There are only two powers which can any longer resist us, and the saints be praised, these powers are becoming day by day more harmless. The House of Stuart, in England, is surrounded by our nets, and in secret does everything for our cause. Sweden still lies stunned by the terrible blow at Nördlingen, and cannot, without fresh miracles, retain its dominant position in Germany. The time has come when our plans are fully matured; we must avail ourselves of our enemies' powerlessness. In a few years England will fall into our hands like a ripe fruit. Sweden, still proud of former victories, shall be forced to do the same. The means to this end will be a change of dynasty."

"Christina, King Gustaf's daughter..."

"Is a nine-year-old child, and besides a girl! We are not without allies in Sweden, who still remember the expelled royal family. The weak Sigismund is dead; Uladislaus, his son, stretches out his hands, with all the impatience of youth, for the crown of his forefathers. It shall be his."

CHAPTER XII.
THE TEMPTER.

"Uladislaus on the Swedish throne? I doubt whether we shall ever live to see that day," said Messenius incredulously.

"Hear me to the end," continued the Jesuit, engrossed by the stupendous plan his scheming head had concocted. "You, Messenius, are the only one who can perform this miracle."

"I ... a miserable prisoner! Impossible."

"To the saints and genius nothing is impossible. The Swede is now well disposed towards royalty. The example of his kings leads him to good or evil. He has especially a great reverence for old King Gustaf Vasa. If it could now be proved that the said king on his death-bed, with repentance, declared the Lutheran doctrine to be heterodox, that he had abjured and cursed the Reformation, and that he had charged his youngest son, the papistical Johan, to atone for his great errors..."

"What do you dare to say?" burst out Messenius, with undisguised surprise. "Such an obvious lie is in direct opposition to Gustaf Vasa's last words at death, all of whose utterances have been so faithfully recorded..."

"Calm yourself, revered friend," interrupted the Jesuit coldly. "Supposing it could be further demonstrated that the second founder of Lutheranism, Carolus IX., likewise on his death-bed declared the Reformation to be a blasphemy and a misfortune...?"

Messenius regarded the Jesuit with dismay.

"And if it can finally be proven that even Gustaf Adolf, before giving up the ghost at Lützen, was struck by a sudden inspiration, and died a heretic's death, under the greatest torment and anguish of soul...?"

Messenius' pale cheeks were covered with a flush.

"Then," continued the Jesuit, with the same composed daring, "there remains of the Vasa dynasty only the demented Erik XIV., the admitted papist, Johan III., and the professed Catholic, Sigismund, with all of whom we need not trouble ourselves in the least. Once convinced that all of their greatest kings either have been papistical, or have become so in their last moments, the scales will fall from the eyes of the Swedish people; they will penitently confess their guilt, and at last fall back into the bosom of the only saving Roman Catholic Church.

"But how will you, revered father, in the face of all the facts, convince the Swedes of the apostasy of their kings?"

"I have already told you," replied the Jesuit flatteringly, "that such a great and meritorious mission can only be accomplished by the gifted Johannes Messenius. All know that you are Sweden's most learned man and greatest historian. They know that you possess and hold in your care more historical documents and secrets than anyone else in the whole kingdom. Use these advantages skilfully and judiciously; compile documents that never existed; describe events that never happened..."

"What do you dare to say?" exclaimed Messenius with burning cheeks.

The Jesuit misunderstood his excitement.

"Yes," continued the Jesuit, "the undertaking is a bold one, but far from impossible. A hasty flight to Poland will secure your safety."

"And it is to me ... to me that you make this proposal?"

"Yes," added the monk, in the same tone. "I realise that Gustaf Adolf will cause you the most trouble, and therefore I will be responsible for him. You will have therefore Gustaf I. and Carl IX. as your share, to present in such a light as will best serve the cause of the holy Church."

"Abi a me, male spiritus!" burst out Messenius in a fit of rage, which the Jesuit with all his sagacity was far from expecting. "You arch-villain! you liar! you infamous traitor, to lay your hand on the holiest; do you think that I, Johannes Messenius, have worked for long years to become Sweden's greatest historian, to all of a sudden, in such an infamous way, violate the historical truth which I have re-established with such long and continuous efforts? Be off this moment, quick ... away, to Gehenna!" ... and with these words the old scholar, wild with rage, flung everything that he could get hold of at the Jesuit's head—books, papers, inkstand, sand-box—with such violence that the monk started. The latter's face became still paler ... then he took a few steps backwards, rose to his full height, and opened the plaited Spanish doublet which covered his breast. A crucifix of flashing diamonds, surmounted by a crown of thorns set with rubies, glittered suddenly in the gathering twilight.

This sight seemed to have a magical effect upon Messenius. His excited voice was suddenly hushed ... his rage changed immediately to fear ... his knees trembled; he staggered, and was on the point of falling, but supported himself with difficulty against the chair at the table. The Jesuit again advanced slowly, and looked steadily at the prisoner with his piercing eyes, which were like those of the rattlesnake.

"Have you forgotten, old man," he said, in a measured and commanding tone, whilst every word was followed by a pause to increase its effect, "the penalty which the Church and the laws of our holy order inflict for sins like yours? For apostasy: death ... and you have seven times apostatized! ... For blasphemy: death ... and you have seven times blasphemed! ... For disobedience: death ... and you have seven times disobeyed! ... For sin against the Holy Ghost: damnation ... and who has sinned like you? ... For heresy: the stake ... and who has merited it like you? ... For offence and disrespect against the holy ones of the Lord: the eternal fire ... and who has given offence like you?"

"Grace, holy father, grace!" exclaimed Messenius, while he writhed like a worm under the Jesuit's terrible threats.

But Father Hieronymus continued:

"The celebrated Nicolaus Pragensis went over to Calvin's false doctrines, and dared to defy the Head of our order. He fled to the farthest corner of Bohemia, but our revenge found him. The dogs tore his body to pieces, and the spirits of hell obtained his soul..."

"Grace! mercy!" sighed the prisoner, completely crushed.

"Well, then," added the Jesuit in a haughty tone or superiority, "I have given you the choice between glory and perdition; I will once more place it before you, although you are undeserving. Do you imagine, miserable apostate, that I, the head of the German and Northern Jesuits, who do not acknowledge any superior except the Holy Father at Rome—do you believe that I, who have braved myriads of dangers to seek you here in your miserable corner, will allow you to stop me, the invisible ruler of the whole North, with your disobedience and irresolution? I ask you once more, in the name of our holy order, if you, Johannes Messenius, will be faithful to the oath you swore in your youth, and implicitly obey the behests and commands which I, your superior and judge, enjoin upon you?"

"Yes, holy father," answered the trembling captive; "yes, I will."

"Hear, then, the penalty I impose. You say that for your whole life you have striven for a single aim; that of gaining the name of the greatest historian in the North, and you think that you have at last attained your desire?"

"Yes, holy father, that has been my object, and I have obtained it."

"Your aim is evil!" exclaimed the Jesuit in stern tones, "and it is that of the devil, for you have worked for your own glory, and not for that of the holy Church, as you have sworn. Therefore, I command you to destroy, with your own hands, the idol of your life—your great fame with posterity—by perverting history and writing it, not as it is, but as it ought to be. I order you to cast away fame, to serve the cause of the Roman Church in the North. You shall write the history of Gustaf I. and Carl IX. in such a manner that all they have done for the Reformation may redound as a ruin and curse both to them and their kingdom. And I will that you base this new history on such reliable documents, that in the eyes of the people they will be above suspicion ... documents which do not exist, but which you shall manufacture ... documents of which the falsity may possibly be discovered in a future generation, but which will at present produce the desired effect."

"And thus," said Messenius, in a voice trembling with the most varied emotions—fear, anger, and humiliation—"I shall stand before posterity as a base falsifier, an infamous perverter of historical truth."

"Yes, and what then?" continued the Jesuit with a sardonic smile; "what matters it, if you, miserable tool, sacrifice your name, provided the Church gains its great victory? Of what advantage is the praise of men, if your soul burns in the eternal fires of hell; and what matters humanity's contempt, if you, through this sacrifice, gain the martyr's crown in Heaven?"

"But the cause of truth ... the inflexible judgment of posterity."

"Bah! what is historical truth? Well, is it the obedient slave who follows at the heels of human errors ... the parrot which thoughtlessly repeats all their folly? Or is it not rather truth, such as it ought to be, purified from error, freed from crime and folly ... God's kingdom on earth, as wise as it is almighty, as good as it is holy and wise?"

"But is it then we who dictate to God what is good and right? Has He not Himself told us that truth, such as it is?"

"Ha! vacillating apostate, you still dare to argue with your superior about right and wrong. Choose, obey or disobey! Choose on one side temporal and eternal death, and on the other the joys of Paradise and the glory of the saints. Yet a word, and upon this depends your weal or woe. Will you obey my commands?"

"Yes, I will obey," answered the crushed and terrified prisoner. And the Jesuit went away silent and cold, with a ruler's nod that the slave had his good grace.

CHAPTER XIII.
AVAUNT, EVIL SPIRIT.

About a week had passed since the private conversation to which we last listened. The Jesuit during this time had not left the prisoner to himself. He was seen to enter Messenius' room every day, under the pretext of medical attendance, and spent some hours with him. He was too acute to rely upon the prisoner's promise. No one in the castle knew what they did together, and the Governor was unsuspicious. The remote situation of Kajajneborg, far from the rest of the world, had lulled Wernstedt into security; he rather found pleasure in the society of the learned and experienced foreign doctor.

There was one, however, who with a constant and vigilant eye followed every motion of the stranger, and this was Lucia Grothusen, Messenius' wife. A Catholic by education and conviction, she had always strengthened her husband in his faith; the Jesuit well knew this, and therefore felt sure of her co-operation, although he carefully avoided confiding his plans to the mercy of female gossip. But the most artful plans are often frustrated by those hidden springs and motives in the human heart, especially in a woman's heart, which work in quite a different direction from that of cold reason. The Jesuit, in spite of his astuteness, was mistaken in our Lucia. He did not know that when the fanaticism in her mind shouted, push on! love cried still louder in her heart, hold back! and love in women always gets the upper hand.

Lucia was a very penetrating person; she had looked through the Jesuit before he knew it. She saw the ruinous inward strife which raged in Messenius; a struggle for life and death between fanaticism on the one hand, which bade him sacrifice fame and posterity for the victory of the Church, and ambition on the other, which continually pleaded to him not to sacrifice with his own hand his whole life's work? "Will you," it said, "blindly desecrate the sanctuary of history? Will you expose to contempt the brilliant name, which in the night of captivity still constitutes your wealth and pride?"

Lucia saw all this with the discernment of love; she saw that the man for whom she lived an entire life of self-denial and restraint, would sink under this terrible internal battle, and she resolved to save him with a bold and decisive stroke.

Late one evening the lamp still burned on Messenius' writing-table, where he and the Jesuit had been working together ever since the morning. Lucia had received permission to retire to her bed, which stood at the other end of the room near the door, and pretended to be asleep. The two men had finished their work, and were conversing together with low voices, in Latin, which Lucia well understood.

"I am satisfied with you, my friend," said the Jesuit approvingly. "These documents, which bear the stamp of truth, will be sufficient to prove the conversion of King Gustaf Vasa and King Carl, and this preface, signed by you, will further confirm their veracity. I will now return to Germany through Sweden, and have these prayers printed, through our adherents in Stockholm, or if that is impossible, in Lübeck or Leyden."

Messenius involuntarily stretched out his hand, as if to snatch back a precious treasure from a robber's hands.

"Holy father," he exclaimed with visible consternation, "is there no reprieve? My name ... my reputation ... have mercy upon me, holy father, and give me back my name!"

The Jesuit smiled.

"Do I not give you a name," he said, "far greater and more abiding than the one you lose—a name in the chronicles of our holy order; a name among the martyrs and benefactors of the Church; a name which may one day be counted amongst the saints?"

"But, in spite of all this, a name without honour, a liar's, a forger's name!" burst out Messenius, with the despair of a condemned man, who is shown the glory of Heaven obscured by the scaffold.

"Weak, vain man, you do not know that great aims are never won by the fear or praise of humanity!" said the Jesuit in a contemptuous tone. "You might have taken back your word and forfeited your claims to the gratitude of all Christendom. But happily it is now impossible. These documents"—and he extended his hand triumphantly with the papers—"are now in a hand which will know how to keep them, and, against your will, use them for the glory of the Church, the victory of the faith, and your soul's eternal welfare."

Father Hieronymus had hardly uttered these words when a hand behind him swiftly and suddenly seized the papers, which he had so elatedly waved, crumpled them together, tore them in a hundred pieces, and strewed the bits over the floor. This move was so unlooked for, and the Jesuit was so far from divining anything of the kind, that he lost his usual presence of mind for a moment, and thus gave the daring hand time to complete its work of destruction. When the fragments lying around convinced him of the reality of his loss, he bit his lips with rage, raised his arms aloft, and with the ferocity of a wild beast, fell upon the presumptuous being who had dared to extinguish his plans at the very moment of consummation.

Lucia—for she owned the intruding hand—met the monk's outbreak of fury with the great courage which distinguishes a woman when she struggles for the holiest she possesses. In her youth she had been one of those who could take a man by the collar; and this more than womanly strength of arm had gained practice during her constant squabbles with the rude soldiers of the castle. She hastily clasped her sinewy fingers around the monk's outstretched arms, and held them fast as in a vice.

"Well," she said in a mocking tone, "three paces from death, sir; what do you wish?"

"Mad woman!" screamed the Jesuit, foaming with rage, "you do not know what you have done! Miserable thief, you have stolen a kingdom from your Church, and Paradise from your husband."

"And from you I have stolen your booty; his secure prey from the wolf; is it not so?" replied Lucia, whose voice began to glow with the fire of her hasty temper. "Monk," she added, violently shaking the eminent Jesuit, who in vain tried to escape, "I know a vile thief, who, in the sheep's clothing of the Church, comes to steal the fame of a great man; also the history of a nation; and from a poor, forsaken woman, her sole pride; her husband's peace, honour, and life. Tell me, holy and pious monk, what punishment such a thief deserves? Would not Ämmä fall be shallow enough for his body, and the eternal fires cool enough for his soul?"

The Jesuit looked out of the window with a hasty movement towards the mighty torrent which descended with a terrible roar in the winter's night.

"Ha!" exclaimed Lucia with a bitter smile, "you fear me, you, the powerful one, who rules kingdoms and consciences. You fear lest I conceal a man's arm under my grey frock, which could hurl you into the cataract's abyss. Be reassured. I am only a woman, and fight with a woman's arms. You see ... I do not throw you out of the window ... I will be content with chaining up the wild beast. Tremble, monk, I know you! Lucia Grothusen has followed your steps; you are betrayed, and she has done this."

"Betrayed!" echoed the Jesuit; he well realised what this statement meant. At a time so full of hate, when two great religions fought for worldly and spiritual supremacy, when the plots of the Jesuits irritated the Swedes to the highest extent, a member of this order, discovered in disguise, in the kingdom, was lost beyond redemption. But the dire peril restored the equilibrium of this powerful character.

"My daughter, betrayed by you," he said once more, as his arms relaxed, and his features assumed an expression of doubt and mild grief. "That is impossible."

Lucia regarded him with hate and suspicion.

"I your daughter!" she exclaimed, as she pushed the monk from her with repulsion. "Falsehood is your daughter, and deceit your mother. These are thy relatives."

"Lucia Grothusen," said the Jesuit with much suavity, "when you were a child, and followed your father, Arnold Grothusen, who was expelled with King Sigismund, you came one day as an exile in need, and surrounded by enemies, to a peasant's hut. They refused you a refuge, and threatened to deliver you up. Then your youthful eyes discovered an image of the Virgin in a corner of the hut, a relic from former times, and now profaned as a plaything for children. You took the image and kissed it; you held it up before the harsh inmates of the hut, and said to them, 'See, the Virgin Mary is here, she will succour us!'"

"Well, what then?" said Lucia reluctantly in a softer voice.

"Your childish trust ... no, what do I say? The Holy Virgin moved the stern peasants, they gave you shelter, and placed you all in security. Still more, they gave you the image, which you have carefully preserved as your guardian angel, and there it hangs on your wall. What you formerly said, you still say: 'The Virgin Mary is here, she will protect me!'"

Lucia tried in vain to struggle against her emotions. She bit her lip and made no reply.

"You are right," continued the astute monk. "I am a Catholic like you; persecuted like you; if they penetrated my disguise they would kill me. My life is in your hands; denounce me; I flee not; I die for my faith, and I forgive you my death."

"Fly from here," said Lucia, half vanquished; "I give you till to-morrow, but only on condition that you do not see my husband again."

"Well, then," said the Jesuit sadly, "I fly and leave behind my beautiful dream of a glorious future. Ah, I had imagined that the great Messenius and his noble wife would reinstate the Catholic Church in the North; I saw the time when millions of people would say: we were in darkness and blindness, until the historical light of the great Messenius revealed to us the falseness of the Reformation."

"If it could be done without injury to the truth," exclaimed Lucia, whose ardent spirit was more and more elevated by the future, which the Jesuit so skilfully placed before her in perspective.

"The truth!" repeated the Jesuit persuasively. "Oh, my friend, truth is our faith, falseness is the heretic's faith. If you are convinced that I ask only the truth itself from your husband, will you assist instead of trying to destroy your Church?"

"Yes, I will!" answered Lucia warmly and earnestly.

"Then listen..." added the Jesuit, but was just then interrupted by Messenius, who, hitherto stunned and crestfallen, now seemed to awaken from a horrible dream.

"Abi, male spiritus!" he frantically exclaimed, as if he feared that the Jesuit's serpent tongue would once more triumph. "Abi, Abi! you are not a human being, you are the prince of lies himself, you are the tempter in Paradise! Get ye gone, ye foul spirit, to the eternal fire, your abiding place, to the kingdom of lies, your realm!" he said in Latin. And with this he pushed the Jesuit towards the door, without Lucia's making the least attempt to prevent it.

"Insanit miser!" ("the miserable raver") muttered the Jesuit as he disappeared.

"Thanks, my dear!" said Lucia, with a lightened heart, as if freed from a dangerous spell.

"Thanks, Lucia!" replied Messenius, with a milder manner than he had for a long time assumed towards his wife.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE JUDGMENT OF THE SAINTS.

Early the next morning Father Hieronymus entered the room that was occupied by Lady Regina von Emmeritz and old Dorthe. Pale from watching and suffering, the beautiful young girl sat by the bedside of her faithful servant. When the Jesuit entered, Regina rose quickly.

"Save Dorthe, my father!" she impetuously exclaimed ... "I have looked for you everywhere, and you have abandoned me!"

"Hush!" said the Jesuit whispering. "Speak low, the walls have ears. So ... actually? ... Dorthe is sick? Poor old woman, it is too bad, but I cannot help her. They have penetrated our disguise. They suspect us. We must fly this day—this moment."

"Not before you have made Dorthe well again. I beseech you, my father; you are wise, you know all the remedies; give her an immediate restorative, and we will follow you wherever you choose.

"Impossible, we have not a moment to lose. Come!"

"Not without Dorthe, my father! Holy Virgin, how could I abandon her, my nurse, my motherly friend?"

The Jesuit went to the bed, took the old woman's hand, touched her forehead, and pointed to it in silence, with an air which Regina understood but too well.

"She is dead!" cried the young girl with dismay.

"Yes, what then?" replied the Jesuit, a marked sinister smile on his lips fighting with the air of regret he tried to assume.

"You see, my child," he added, "that the saints have wished to spare our faithful old friend a toilsome journey, and have taken her instead to heavenly glory. There is nothing more to be done here. Come!"

But Regina had perceived the malignant smile through her tears, and it struck her with an indescribable horror. She seemed to detect a dark secret.

"Come!" he repeated hastily. "I will give Messenius' wife, who is a Catholic, the charge of burying our friend."

Regina's dark eyes looked on the monk with fear and aversion.

"At seven o'clock yesterday evening," she said, "Dorthe was in good health. Then she drank the beverage of strengthening herbs which you have prepared for her every evening. At eight o'clock she was taken ill ... ten hours afterwards she has ceased to live."

"The fatigue of the long journey ... a cold, an inflammation ... nothing more is wanted. Come!" said the monk uneasily.

But Regina did not move.

"Monk," she said in a voice trembling with disgust and horror, "you have poisoned her."

"My child, my daughter, what are you saying? Grief has clouded your reason; come, I forgive you."

"She was a burden to you ... I saw your impatience on our journey here. And now you wish me to place myself in your power without protection. Holy Virgin, save me! I will not go with you!"

The Jesuit's mobile features instantly changed their expression, and assumed that commanding air which had made Messenius yield.

"Child," he said, "do not draw upon yourself the anger of the saints by listening to the voice of the tempter. Remember where you are, unfortunate, and who you are. A moment's delay, and I leave you here a prey to want, captivity, and death; a target for the heretic's scorn, a lost sheep abandoned by the Holy Virgin. Here perdition and misery ... there in your Fatherland the favour of the saints. Choose quickly, for the sleigh stands waiting; the morning dawns, and day must not find us in this nest of heretics."

Regina hesitated.

"Swear," she said, "that you are innocent of Dorthe's death!"

"I swear it!" exclaimed the Jesuit, "by the cross and by the holy Loyola's bones. May the firm ground open under my feet, and the abyss swallow me alive, if I have ever given this woman any drink but what was healthful and medicinal."

"Well, then," said Regina, "the saints have heard your oath, and written it down in the book of judgment. Farewell, my mother, my friend! Come, let us go!"

Both hurried out.

It was still dark. A pale ray of light appeared over the dark firs on the edge of Koivukoski fall. The horses stood harnessed. The sleepy guard at the castle gate gave a free passage to the physician, who was well known to all.

The Jesuit already thought himself in safety, when a sleigh from the mainland met the fugitives on the narrow bridge, and drove close up to them in the darkness. The monk's sleigh turned on the edge, and was only hindered by the half-rotten railing from upsetting into the depths.

Regina gave a cry of terror.

At the sound of this cry a man sprang from the other sleigh and approached the fugitives.

"Regina!" cried a well-known voice, which trembled from surprise.

"You are mistaken, my friend," the Jesuit hastened to say in a disguised voice. "Give way to Doctor Albertus Simonis, army physician in the service of his Royal Majesty."

"Ha! it is you, accursed Jesuit!" cried the stranger. "Guard, to arms! To arms! and seize the greatest villain on earth." And so saying, he grasped the monk by his fur cloak.

For an instant Hieronymus tried to disengage the sleigh and escape through the speed of the horses. But when he found that this was impossible, he left his fur cloak behind him, wriggled from his enemy's grasp, and, throwing himself quickly over the railing of the bridge, jumped down on the ice, which, in the terrible cold, had formed between the castle island and the mainland. He soon vanished in the dim morning light.

Alarmed by the cry, the castle gate guard discharged his musket after the fugitive, but without effect. Some of the soldiers seemed inclined to pursue him on the ice.

"Do not do that, boys!" cried a bearded sergeant, "it has thawed during the night, and the stream has cut the ice underneath; I think it will break up to-day."

"But the fellow jumped down there!" cried some.

"The devil will get him," replied the sergeant, calmly lighting his morning pipe. "I guess by this time he is not far from Ämmä."

"What did you say?" cried the driver of the sleigh in alarm.

"I say that the old woman* has got her breakfast to-day," answered the sergeant with perfect composure. "Just listen, she barks like a chained dog; now she is satisfied."

* The Finnish word ämmä means old woman.

All listened, appalled, to the din of the waters. It seemed to them as if the mighty fall roared more wildly, more terribly than before, in the dreary winter dawn. The sergeant was right, it was like the howl of an angry dog, when they have thrown him his prey.

CHAPTER XV.
BERTEL AND REGINA.

We left our wandering knight of La Mancha asleep in a peasant's house at Ylihärmä. We found him again just now at Kajaneborg castle, vainly trying to secure the feared and hated Jesuit, whom he had seen through the window-pane of the wretched hut. Bertel's circuitous course during the days between can be perhaps imagined. Led on a false scent in his chase after the fugitives, he had scoured all the roads in East Bothnia, and even went as far up as Uleiborg, and only when he had lost every sign of them did he resolve as a last resource to seek the runaways in the far-off Kajana desert. Why the young cavalier pursued them with such unconquerable perseverance will soon be manifest.

Some hours after the scene on the bridge we find Bertel in the apartment which the Governor had assigned to Lady Regina, under the protection of one of his female relatives. More than three years have passed since they last met in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, in the presence of the great king.

Bertel was then an inexperienced youth of twenty, and Regina an equally untrained girl of sixteen. Both had gone through many trials since then; in each case the burning enthusiasm of youth had been cooled by struggles and sufferings.

The distance between the prince's daughter and the lieutenant had been lessened by Bertel's military fame and lately acquired coat of arms; nay, at this moment, she, the abandoned prisoner, might consider herself honoured by a knight's attentions. But the distance between their convictions, their sympathies, their hearts—had it been diminished by these trials, which generally steel a conviction instead of destroying it?

Bertel approached the young girl with all the perfect courtesy which the etiquette of his time had retained as an inheritance from the chivalry of past centuries.

"My lady," he said in a slightly tremulous voice, "since my hope of finding you at Korsholm failed, I have pursued you through forest and wilderness, as one pursues a criminal. Perhaps you divine the cause that prompted me to do so."

Regina's long black eyelashes were slowly lifted, and she looked inquiringly at Bertel.

"Chevalier," she replied, "whatever has animated you, I am convinced that your reasons were noble and chivalrous. You cannot have meant to take an unhappy young maiden back to prison; you have only wished to snatch her from a man whom the poor deceived one has ever since childhood regarded as a holy and pious person, and whose deeply concealed wickedness she has now, for the first time, learned to know and abhor."

"You are mistaken," said Bertel warmly. "It is true I shuddered when I found that you were under the escort of this villain, whose real character I knew before you, and I then redoubled my efforts to deliver you from his hands. But before I imagined any danger from that quarter, I flew to find you with the glad tidings of a justice ... late, but I hope not too late."

"A justice, you say?" repeated Regina, with an emotion which sent the blood to her cheeks.

"Yes, my lady," continued Bertel, as he regarded her dazzling beauty with delight; "at last, after several years of fruitless efforts, I have succeeded in undoing this undeserved penalty. You are free! you can now return to your Fatherland under the protection of the Swedish arms, and here"—with these words Bertel bent one knee and handed Regina a paper with the regency's seal attached—"is the document which ensures your freedom."

Regina had controlled her first emotion, and received the precious paper with almost haughty dignity.

"Herr chevalier," she said in short measured tones, "I know that you do not desire my thanks for having acted like a man of honour before any of your compatriots."

Bertel arose, confused by this pride, which he, however, ought to have expected.

"What I have done," he said, with a touch of coldness, "I have done to efface a wrong which might have thrown a shadow upon the memory of a great king. Each and all of my countrymen would have done the same as I, had not the exigencies of war made them forget the reparation you had a right to demand. First of all would the noble King Gustaf Adolf himself have hastened to repair a moment's indiscretion, had not Providence so suddenly cut short his career. But," said Bertel, breaking off, "I forget that the king I love and admire, you, my lady, hate!"

At these words the bright and beautiful colour again rose to Regina's cheeks. Bertel had unknowingly touched one of the most sensitive chords in this ardent heart. A new discovery, a wonderful resemblance in figure, voice, gesture, nay, in thought—a likeness which she had never before observed, and which these three years had developed in Bertel's whole personality, made an indescribable impression upon the young Southerner's soul. It seemed to her as if she saw him himself, the greatest among mortals, the pride of her dreams, her life's delight and misery; he, the beloved and feared, her country's, her faith's, and her heart's conqueror ... and as if he himself had said to her in the well-remembered tones: "Regina, you hate me!"

This impression came so swiftly, so strongly, and with such a surprising power, that Regina suddenly grew pale, staggered, and was compelled to lean on Bertel's outstretched arm.

"Holy Virgin!" she whispered, bewildered, and not knowing what she uttered, "should I hate you ... you, whom I lo ...?"

Bertel caught this half incomprehensible word, so full of meaning, with a surprise as sudden and unexpected as Regina's. Beside himself with amazement, fear, and hope, he was still too chivalrous to avail himself of an involuntary confession. Mute and respectful, he led the young girl to her protectress, in whose care she soon recovered from her sudden prostration, an effect of long-suppressed emotions, which sought vent.

Bertel had obtained permission to escort Lady Regina to Stockholm, from whence she could return to her Fatherland, at the first open waters. He was, therefore, at liberty to remain at Kajaneborg until she was ready for the journey, and this was again delayed through lack of a fitting female companion for the high-born prisoner.

Weeks passed in waiting, and during this time entirely new relations were formed, which one could hardly have predicted after Regina's proud coldness towards her deliverer. Ah! this coldness was the ice over a glowing volcano; every day it grew thinner and melted away; every day the foundations of Regina's pride gradually became weaker, and finally only one barrier remained, the strongest one of all, it is true, namely, that of religious convictions. Vain wall! It, too, finally crumbled before the fire of a southern passion, and before these weeks were ended, the girl of nineteen, and the young man of twenty-three, had forgotten the great differences of faith and rank, and sworn each other fidelity for life.

Did Bertel know that he had to thank the memory of Gustaf Adolf for his beautiful, proud, black-eyed bride?

A singular destiny wished to seal this union in an unexpected and wonderful manner. With a secret apprehension for his future happiness, Bertel had tried in vain to discover the Jesuit's fate.

Since the morning when he leaped over the railing of the bridge, no one had heard or seen anything of him, until, three weeks afterwards, a peasant reported that on opening a hole in the ice, a little below Ämmä fall, they had discovered the body of a man without ears, clothed in a foreign garb, which the peasant brought with him, and which were recognised as those of Father Hieronymus. In addition, the honest Paldamo peasant produced a small copper ring, which had been found hanging by a cord on the dead man's neck.

Bertel looked at this ring with astonishment and delight.

"At last I have you!" he exclaimed, "the ring I have so long sought ... and with you the certainty of this terrible man's death."

"The judgment of the saints on the perjurer!" exclaimed Regina, awe-struck.

"The judgment of the saints, which confirms our happiness!" rejoined Bertel, and he placed on Regina's finger the King's Ring.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE KING'S RING—THE SWORD AND THE
PLOUGH—FIRE AND WATER.

Again we return to Storkyro, to Bertila's farm, and the old peasant king.

It is a March day, in the year 1635. The spring sun is already melting the snow, and the roofs drip on the sunny side; the icy crust bears one's weight on the north side of the hill, but breaks on the south. Aron Bertila has just come home from church with all his folks, his grey head is bent, and he leans on Meri's arm. At his side walk two sturdy, thick-set figures—old Larsson, and his newly arrived son, the brave and learned captain, the faithful image of his father, except in age. On the captain's arm is his young, light-hearted, and pretty little wife, whose features we recognise. It is no other than Ketchen, the courageous and merry girl, whose soft hand once made the gallant captain lose his wits. Since that day he has sworn by all the Greek and Roman authors, whom he formerly read in Abo Cathedral School, that the soft-handed novice among the Würzburg sisters of charity should some day become his. And when the vicissitudes of war again brought them together, when Ketchen was without protection, and besides, had nothing against an honest, jovial soldier, this cheerful pair were formally wedded in the autumn at Stralsund, and then went to visit their kind-hearted father in Storkyro, where they were warmly welcomed, and received like children in the house.

It must be added that Larsson had obtained his discharge from the service after much trouble, and without having a rise in rank. It is to be regretted that he had not gathered a farthing from the booty in Germany, like many of his comrades. All that he had earned—and if we can believe him, it must have amounted to millions—had taken wings; but where? At Nördlingen, he says. By no means. But in revels and sprees with jolly fellows like himself. Now he meant to be as regular and steady as a gate-post; to succeed his father as inspector of Bertila's large farms; to plough, sow, harvest, and pro modulo virium prolen copiosam in lucem proferre, as those in olden times so truly said.

Old Bertila treats him with apparent favour. Significant words have escaped the old man, and he has just given his will into the hands of the judge.

As for Meri, she has withered like a flower without roots, and clings to life only by one heart-thread: the banished, rejected Gustaf Bertel, now ennobled to Bertelskold.

This domestic circle, composed of such differing elements, both light and shadows, are now gathered in the large "stuga," surrounded by the numerous field hands, and old Larsson now tries, in secret alliance with Meri, to bring the stern peasant king to a better state of mind towards Bertel. But all their prayers and reasons break against the old man's unyielding firmness ... Larsson turns angrily away, and Meri conceals her tears in the darkest corner of the room.

Then sleigh-bells are again heard outside, as on Twelfth-day evening; a large sleigh stops in the yard, and two persons alight from it, an officer in his ample cloak, and a young and classically beautiful woman in a magnificent mantle of black velvet, lined with precious fur. Meri and old Larsson turn pale at this sight; Larsson tries to hasten out, but it is too late. Bertel and Regina enter the "stuga."

Both the Larssons and Meri surround Bertel with warm and apparently embarrassed greetings. Ketchen flies and throws herself, without thinking of the difference between her burgher dress and the costly velvet cloak, into Regina's arms, who, with emotion, clasps her faithful friend to her heart.

Bertel gently frees himself from Meri's embrace, and goes straight up to old Bertila with a firm step, who, cold and silent in his high chair at the end of the table, does not honour him with a word or glance.

All present await with dismayed looks the result of this decisive meeting. The young officer has taken off his cloak and hat, his long fair hair falls in beautiful waves around his open brow, his cheeks are very pale, but the expressive blue eyes regard the grey-haired man's iron face with a firm and steadfast look.

Bertel now, as before, bends a knee, and says in a voice at once humble and confident:

"My father!"

"Who are you? I know you not; I have no son!" said the old man in chilling tones.

"My father!" continued Bertel, without allowing himself to be checked, "I come here once more, and for the last time, to ask your forgiveness and blessing. Thrust me not from you! I am going to leave my Fatherland, to fight and perhaps die on German soil. It depends upon you whether I ever return. Remember, my father, that your blessing gives you back a son; that your curse drives him into exile for ever."

The features of the old man did not change their expression, but the tones of his voice indicated an internal struggle.

"My answer is short," he said. "I had a son; he became unworthy of me and all the principles which have governed my life. He abandoned the cause of the people to pay homage to the pernicious power which I hate and detest. I have no longer a son. I have to-day disinherited him."

The faces of all the hearers turn pale at these words. But Bertel colours slightly, and says:

"My father, I do not ask for your property. Give it to the one you consider more worthy than I. I only ask your forgiveness ... your blessing, my father."

All around the old man, except Regina, fell on their knees and exclaimed:

"Grace for Bertel! Grace for your son!"

"And if I had a son, do you believe he would for my sake give up his desire for the false distinctions of nobility? Do you think he would become a peasant like me, a man of the people, ready to live and die for their cause? Do you fancy that he would plough the earth with his fine-gloved hands and choose a wife from my station, a simple plain woman, befitting the spouse of a husbandman?"

"My father," replied Bertel, in a voice more tremulous than before, "what you ask is impossible on account of the education you have yourself bestowed on me. I honour and respect your station, but I have grown accustomed to the career of a soldier, which I neither can nor will abandon. To choose a wife to your mind is equally impossible. Here is my wife; she is a prince's daughter, but she has chosen a peasant's son for her husband; this is a proof that she will not blush to call you father."

At these words Regina humbly approached the old man as if to kiss his hand, and all rose except Bertel and his father. But the peasant king's former fiery temper now burst forth.

"Did I not say so!" he shouted. "There stands the renegade who was born a peasant, and became the servant of lords. Ha! by God! I have in my day seen much strife and defiance between the sword and the plough, but a scene like this I have never beheld. The boy who calls himself my son dares to bring before my eyes his high-born harlot and call her his wife."

Bertel sprang up and supported Regina, who nearly sank to the floor at these words.

"Old man," he said in a voice full of anger, "thank your name of father and your grey head that you have been allowed to utter what no one else should have uttered and live an hour afterwards. Here is the ring I placed on the hand of my lawfully wedded wife"—with this he took the king's ring from Regina's finger—"and I swear that her hand is as pure and worthy as that of any other mortal to wear this ring, which has for so many years been worn by the greatest of kings."

Meri's eyes stared at the ring, her pale cheeks coloured with a deep flush, and she had a violent internal struggle. Finally she stepped nearer, took and pressed the ring with ecstasy to her lips, and said in a broken voice and with an emotion so strong that it dried her tears:

"My ring which he has worn ... my ring which has protected him ... you are innocent of his death; he gave you away, and then came the bullets and death. Do you know, Gustaf Bertel, and you, his wife, the power of this ring? In my youth I one day went into the wilderness, and there found a dying man, who was languishing from thirst. I gave him a drink from the spring, and cooled his tongue with the juice of berries. He thanked me and said: 'My friend, I die, and have no other recompense to give you than this ring. I found it in former days on an image of the Holy Virgin, which alone lay uninjured in the midst of the broken fragments of Popery in Storkyro Church; and when I took the ring from its finger the image fell to dust. The ring has both the power of the saints and that of magic, for with me the greatness of the ancient occult knowledge goes into the silence. He who wears this ring is secure against fire, water, steel, and all kinds of dangers, on the sole condition that he never swears a false oath, for that destroys the power of the ring; with this ring goes happiness in peace, and victory in war; love, honour, and wealth; and when it is worn by three successive generations, from father to son, then from that family shall come brilliant statesmen and generals...'"

Here Meri paused; all listened with intense expectation.

"But," she added, "if the ring is worn by six generations one after the other, then a mighty royal house will spring from that family. 'But,' said the old man to me, 'you ought to know that great dangers accompany great gifts. False oaths and family enmity will constantly tempt the owner of the ring, and thus endeavour to neutralise its power; pride and inordinate ambition will constantly work within him to prepare his fall, and a great steadfastness in the right path will be necessary, joined with a meek and humble heart, to vanquish these temptations. He who wears this ring will enjoy all the prosperity of the world, and only have to conquer himself; but he will also be the most formidable enemy of his own happiness. All this is signified: by the letters, R.R.R., which are engraved on the inside of the ring, and interpreted thus: Rex Regi Rebellis—the king rebellious against the king; the happiest, the mightiest among men, has to fear the greatest danger within himself.'"

"And this ring, O Regina, is ours!" exclaimed Bertel, with both fear and joy. "What a wealth and what a responsibility goes with this ring."

"Power! Honour! Immortality!" caed Regina with transport.

"Beware, my daughter!" said Meri sadly. "Behind these words lie the greatest dangers."

Old Bertila looked at the ring and the young people with a contemptuous smile.

"False gold!" he said. "Vanity! Useless ornament! False ambition! This is a worthy gift to go in inheritance from generation to generation among the nobility. Come, Larsson the younger, you, who are also of peasant origin, and who wish to return to your station, although you too have been a soldier. I will give you something which is neither gold or a useless ornament, but which will bring you more blessings than all the kings' rings in the world. Take my old axe with the oak handle from the wall there; yes, fear not, there is no magic in that; my father forged it with his own hand, in Gustaf Vasa's time. With it father and I have felled many a heavy tree in the forests, and cleared many a field. May it pass in inheritance within your family, and I promise you that he who possesses my axe shall be blessed with happiness and contentment of mind in his honest labour."

"Thanks, thanks, Father Bertila," answered the captain joyfully, and, with an air of importance, tried the edge of the old man's axe. "If we took a fancy to engrave any inscription on it, I should propose R.R.R., Ruris Rusticus Robustus, which is to say briefly: 'The deuce, what a big, bulky chopper! a very beautiful and intellectual saying among those in olden times."

Larsson the elder now considered the opportunity at hand to give the bitter contest a more amicable turn. He stepped up to old Bertila, leading by the hands the two newly married pairs, and said:

"Dear old friend, let us not meddle in the Lord's business. Your boy and mine are a couple of great rascals, that is granted; but are they to blame that our Lord created one of them of fire and the other of water? Bertel is like a flame—burning hot, ambitious, high-reaching, brilliant, ephemeral, and I will bet anything that his little wife is of the same sort. My boy, here, is of the purest water."

"Stop!" cried the captain. "Water has never been my weak side!"

"Hold your tongue! My boy is the clear water ... flowing and unstable, contentedly keeping itself to the ground, and created especially to put out the other youngster's poetical blaze with its prosaic philosophy. As for his wife, she is of the same stuff. Do you not see, Bertila, that our Lord has intended the boys for friends? ... the fire to warm the water, and the water to quench the fire ... and you would make them enemies by taking from one and giving to the other. No, Bertila, do not do it, this is my advice; give your son what belongs to him; my son will not starve for want of it."

Bertila remained silent for a moment. Then he said vehemently:

"Do not teach me the meaning of the Lord. Can you believe that he, the fresh-baked nobleman, whom you compare with the fire, could be induced to give away the ring and take the axe in its place?"

"Never!" excitedly exclaimed Bertel.

Meri seized his hand, and looked beseechingly at him.

"Give away the ring," she said. "You know some of its dangers, but there is still one which I, from anguish, have not mentioned. All who wear this ring will die a violent death."

"What then!" exclaimed Bertel. "The death of the soldier on the battlefield is grand, and full of honour. I do not ask a better one."

"Just listen to him," said Bertila bitterly. "I knew it; he runs after fame even to the grave. A peaceful death or a peaceful life is an abomination to him; but you, Larsson, tell me: have you a desire to give away the axe and take the ring?"

"H'm!" thoughtfully replied the captain; "if the ring were of gold, I might sell it in town and get a good cask of ale for the money. But as it is only of copper ... pshaw! I send it to the deuce, and keep the axe, which is at least useful for cutting wood."

"Well done!" said Bertila; "you are sprinkling water on fire, as your father said. It is not I who have made fire and water eternally hostile to each other. Come, Larsson, you, the sound, common-sense, practical man, be my son, and one day take my farms when I am no longer here. My blessing on you and your descendants. May they multiply, and work like ants on the land, and may there be eternal hostility between them and the nobility, the people with the fiery temperament. May there be war and not peace between them and you until the useless glitter disappears from humanity. May the axe and the ring live in open feud until both are melted in the same heat. When this happens after a century or more, then it will be time to say, class distinctions have seen their last days, and a man's merit is his only coat of arms."

"But, my father," exclaimed Bertel in an entreating voice, "have you then no blessing to give me, and my posterity, at the moment when we separate for ever?"

"You!" repeated the old man, in still angry tones. "Go, you lost, vain, worm-eaten branch of the people's great trunk; go in your pitiful parade to certain ruin. Until the day when, as I said, the axe and the ring, the false gold and the true steel melt together ... until then I give you my curse as an inheritance, even unto the tenth generation, and with it shall follow dissension, hatred, war, and finally a despicable fall."

"Hold there, Father Bertila," cried Larsson the younger. "Grace for Bertel!"

"No grace for nobility," replied the peasant king.

"Beware, unnatural father!" cried Larsson the elder. "The doom may fall on your own head."

"I no longer ask any grace," said Bertel, pale, but apparently calm. "Farewell, my former father! Farewell, my Fatherland! I go never to see you again!"

"One moment," interrupted Meri, who with a violent effort placed herself in his way. "You go! yes, go ... my heart's darling, my hope, my life, my all ... go, I shall no longer stand in your way. But before you leave me, you shall take with you the secret which has been both my life's highest joy and its greatest agony..."

"Hear her not!" cried old Bertila in a changed and alarmed tone. "Listen not to what she says; madness speaks through her! ... Think of your honour and mine," he sternly whispered in his pale daughter's ear.

"What do I care for your or my honour!" burst out Meri with an impetuosity never before witnessed. "Do you not see that he goes ... my life's joy leaves me, to return no more? He goes, and you, hard, in-human parent, wish me to let him depart with a curse to foreign lands. But it shall not be. For every curse you throw upon his head, I will give him a hundred blessings, and we shall see which will avail the most before the throne of the Supreme Being—your hatred or my love—the grandfather's curse or the mother's blessing..."

"My mother!" exclaimed Bertel beside himself with astonishment. Duke Bernhard's obscure hints now suddenly became clear.

"Believe her not; she knows not—she knows not what she says!" cried Bertila, with a vain attempt to appear calm.

Meri had sunk into Bertel's arms.

"It is now said," she whispered in a weak voice. "Gustaf ... my son. Ah! it is so new and so sweet to call you so. Now you know my life's secret ... and I have not long to blush over it. Do you love me? ... Yes, yes! Now I go from life rejoicing ... the veil is lifted ... light comes ... My father, ... I forgive you ... that you have hated and cursed your daughter's son ... Forgive me ... that I ... love ... bless ... my son!..."

"My mother!" exclaimed Bertel, "hear me, my mother! I thank you ... I love you! ... You shall go with me, and I will never desert you. But you do not hear me. You are so pale ... Great God ... she is dead!"

"My daughter! my only child!" exclaimed the old hard-hearted peasant king, completely crushed.

"Judge not, lest ye be judged!" said old Larsson with clasped hands. "And you, our children, go put into life with reconciled hearts. Curse and blessing struggle for your future, and not only for yours, but for that of your posterity, unto the tenth generation. Pray to Heaven that blessing may conquer."

"Amen!" said Larsson the younger and Ketchen.

"So be it!" said Bertel and Regina.

END OF THE FIRST CYCLE.

Jarrold and Sons, The Empire Press, Norwich and London.

SELECTIONS FROM
LIST OF FICTION

Maurus Jókai's Famous Novels.

Black Diamonds.

By MAURUS JÓKAI, Author of "The Green Book," "Poor Plutocrats," etc. Translated by Frances Gerard. With Special Preface by the Author.

The Green Book. (FREEDOM UNDER THE SNOW.)

By MAURUS JÓKAI. Translated by Mrs. Waugh. With a finely engraved Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Pretty Michal.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a specially engraved Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

A Hungarian Nabob.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a fine Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

The Poor Plutocrats. (AS WE GROW OLD.)

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a fine Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

The Day of Wrath.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated from the Hungarian by R. Nisbet Bain. With a Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Dr. Dumany's Wife.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by F. Steinitz (under the author's personal supervision). With specially engraved Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

The Nameless Castle.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by S. E. Boggs (under the author's personal supervision). With a Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Debts of Honor.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by A. B. Yolland. With a charming Photogravure Portrait of Dr. and Madame Jókai.

'Midst the Wild Carpathians.

By MAURUS JÖKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a specially engraved Portrait of Dr. Jokai.

The Lion of Janina.

By MAURUS JÓKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a special Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Eyes Like the Sea.

By MAURUS JÓKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a fine Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Halil the Pedlar; THE WHITE ROSE.

By MAURUS JÓKAI. Translated by R. Nisbet Bain. With a Photogravure Portrait of Dr. Jókai.

Carpathia Knox.

By CURTIS YORKE, Author of "Hush," "That Little Girl," "A Romance of Modern London," etc. With a charming Photogravure Portrait of the Author.

Jocelyn Erroll.

By CURTIS YORKE, Author of "Once," "Dudley," "The Wild Ruthvens," etc. With a fine Photogravure Portrait of the Author.

Valentine: A STORY OF IDEALS.

By CURTIS YORKE, Author of "The Medlicotts," "His Heart to Win," "Because of the Child," etc.

In Tight Places.

By MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS, Author of "Forbidden by Law," etc.

St. Peter's Umbrella.

By KÁLMÁN MIKSZÁTH, Author of "The Good People of Palvez." Translated from the original Hungarian by W. B. Worswick. With Introduction by R. Nisbet Bain. A charming Photogravure Portrait of the Author and three illustrations.

The Adventures of Cyrano de Bergerac. Captain Satan.

From the French of Louis Gallet. With specially engraved Portrait of Cyrano de Bergerac.

A Woman's Burden,

By FERGUS HUME, Author of "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," "The Lone Inn," etc.

Vivian of Virginia.

Being the Memoirs of Our First Rebellion, by John Vivian, of Middle Plantation, Virginia. By Hulbert Fuller, Author of "God's Rebel." With ten charming Illustrations by Frank T. Merrill.

Anima Vilis.

A tale of the Great Siberian Steppe. By MARYA RODZIEWICZ. Translated from the Polish by Count S. C. de Soissons. With a fine Photogravure Portrait of the Author.

The Tone King.

A Romance of the Life of Mozart. By Heribert Rau. Translated by J. E. S. Rae. With specially engraved Portrait of Mozart.

The Golden Dog (LE CHIEN D'OR).

A Romance of the days of Louis Quinze in Quebec. By WILLIAM KIRBY, F.R.S.C.

Memory Street.

By MARTHA BAKER DUNN, Author of "Sleeping Beauty," "Lias' Wife," etc.

God's Rebel.

By HULBERT FULLER, Author of "Vivian of Virginia."

The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore.

A Farcical Novel. By HAL GODFREY (Miss C. O'Conor Eccles).

The Man Who Forgot.

By JOHN MACKIE, Author of the "Prodigal's Brother," "Sinners Twain," etc. With a special Photogravure Portrait of the Author.

Jarrold & Sons'
New Six-Shilling Fiction

By MAURUS JOKAI.
Haiti the Pedlar.
(The White Rose).

By COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.
Tales Prom Tolstoi.
Translated from the Russian by R. NISBET-BAIN,
and with Biography of the Author.

By the Author of "ANIMA VILIS."
Distaff.
By MARYA RODZIEWICZ.
Translated from the Polish by COUNT STANISLAUS
C. DE SOISSONS.

By RENÉ BAZIM.
Autumn Glory.
Translated by MRS. ELLEN WAUGH.

By the Author of
"DUKE RODNEY'S SECRET."
Ivy Cardew.
By PERRINGTON PRIMM.

By HULBERT FULLER.
God's Rebel.

By MARTHA BAKER DUNN.
Memory Street.

London:
JARROLD & SONS,
Publishers,
10 & 11, Warwick Lane,
E.C.