“Give some money quickly to that poor man who carried me.”
The poor man had run away with his heart a little swollen; he was not angry with the young countess for liking clean gloves, but he said to himself that it was quite impossible for him, for his part, to have white hands.
He returned to the forge, where he was having some tools made after an improved pattern, suggested by himself and approved of by the inspectors; but after an hour’s labor, for he often lent a hand himself to help on his men, he heard the visitors returning, and could not resist his desire of again seeing the young countess. She had seemed to him a little taller, and greatly improved; beautiful enough, indeed, to madden the blindest and sulkiest of the cyclops.
As the voices again became more distant, he entered, without any precaution, a gallery through which the party would be obliged to pass, when suddenly, in a brightly-lighted hall, he met Margaret face to face. Now that she had become a little accustomed to the terrific noises and gloomily sublime aspect of this subterranean world, she had recovered her courage, and was coming forward alone, in advance of the others. She trembled on seeing him; she thought that she recognized him. He pulled his cap quickly over his forehead, and she knew him then, beyond a doubt, by the care he took to hide his face.
“Christian!” she cried; “it is you, I am sure of it!” And she held out her hand.
“Do not touch me!” said Christian. “I am all black with powder and smoke.”
“Ah! what do I care for that,” she replied, “since it is you? I know all now. The miners who have been showing us about have been talking all the while of a certain Christian, a very learned man and a famous workman, who would not tell his family name, but who has the strength of a peasant and the dignity of an iarl, who is courageous for all and devoted to all. Our friends did not suppose for a moment that it could be you, there are so many Christians in this Scandinavian land! But, for my part, I said to myself: ‘There is only one answering to that description; it is he!’ Come, then, shake hands! Are we not still brother and sister, as at Stollborg?”
How could Christian help forgetting the little offence of the wiped glove? Margaret held out her hand to him ungloved.
“You do not blush, then, to see me here?” he said; “you know that I have not been driven to come here by bad conduct, and that if I am working to-day, it is not to make up for days of idleness and folly?”
“I do not know anything about you,” replied Margaret, “except that you have kept your word given formerly to Major Larrson, to be a miner, or a hunter of bears, rather than continue an occupation of which I did not approve.”