Her father was again reproving her for this new impropriety, when the servant announced sir Mac Donalbain, and Christine started with a look of mingled joy and alarm.
'He is heartily welcome!' cried the governor, and a tall, well built man, about thirty years old, entered the hall. He wore a short, green overcoat with copper buttons. At his broad leather girdle, in which two pistols were inserted, hung a broad sabre, and in his hand he carried a double-barrelled gun. His sunburnt face was not regularly handsome, but the spirit and boldness which characterized it, rendered it interesting. The wild black eyes, however, which peered from under his dark brows, and a few wrinkles on his forehead and about his mouth, gave him a grim and disagreeable expression. Arwed, who glanced now at him and now at the polished Frenchman, compared the two, and came to the conclusion that he was not in the very best of company.
'Whence do you come so late, sir Mac Donalbain?' kindly asked the governor.
'I have been hunting in the Asele Lappmark,' answered the guest, laying aside his weapons and boldly seating himself near Christine. 'I had got belated, and the light of your hospitable castle shone so invitingly that I concluded to ask of you entertainment for the night.'
'This worthy Scot is in a certain sense a brother sufferer of yours, dear major, in so far as the death of our king has destroyed his prosperity as well as yours. He had the assurance of an advantageous post in our army, made a long journey to come here, found his hopes annihilated by the death of the king, and for the present lives upon his income, at Hernoesand, awaiting better times.'
'Singular!' remarked Megret, whilst the brother sufferers bowed silently to each other. 'I was lately at Hernoesand, and could hear nothing of you there, although I took particular pains to find you.'
'I reside there no longer,' answered Mac Donalbain, not without some embarrassment. 'A difficulty which I had there, induced me to remove to Arnaes.'
'A difficulty?' asked Megret, smiling. 'I am sorry for that. I hope it was not with the public authorities?'
'One readily perceives, colonel,' interfered Christine, with bitterness, 'that you are a foreigner. In hospitable Sweden, such questions are not allowable, even from the host himself, much less from one guest to another.'
'Why so excited, countess?' asked Megret with his customary cold smile. 'If sir Mac Donalbain will not or cannot answer my question, I shall be content. He has my sympathy, notwithstanding; and, in my journey back to Stockholm, I should be pleased to go round by Arnaes to take personal leave of him.'