“See what?”
“The water-sprite, Uldra. Before you throw me in to the water-sprite, we will see which is the strongest.” And in desperation, Hund, unarmed as he was, threw himself upon the pirate, sprang at his throat, and both wrestled with all their force. Rolf could not but look; and he saw that the pirate had drawn forth his pistol, and that all would be over with Hund in a moment if he did not interfere. He stood forward between the two pine stems on the ridge of the rock, and uttered very loud the mournful cry which had so terrified his enemies at Vogel islet. The combatants flew asunder as if parted by a flash of lightning. Both looked up to the point whence the sound had come, and there they saw what they supposed to be Rolf’s spectre pointing at them, and the eyes staring as when looking up from the waters of the fiord. How could these guilty and superstitious men doubt that it was Rolf’s spectre which, rising through the centre of the tarn, had caused the late commotion in its waters? Away they fled, at first in different directions; but it amused Rolf to observe that, rather than be alone, Hund turned to follow the track of the tyrant who had just been threatening and insulting him, and driving him to struggle for his life.
“Ay,” thought Rolf, “it is his conscience that makes me so much more terrible to him than that ruffian. I never hurt a hair of his head; and yet, through his conscience, my face is worse than the blasting lightning to his eyes.—When will all the people hereabouts find out, as my mistress said when I was a boy,—when will people find out that the demons and sprites they live in fear of all come out of their own heads and hearts? Here, in Hund’s case, is guilt shaping out visions whichever way he turns. Not one of his ghost-stories is there for months past, but I am at the bottom of; and that only through his consciousness of hating and wanting to injure me. Then, in the opposite case—of one as innocent as the whitest flower in all this pasture—in my Erica’s case, the ghosts she sees are all from passions that leave her heart pure, but bewilder her eyes. It is the fear that she was early made subject to, and the grief that she feels for her mother, that create demons and sprites for her. The day may come, if I can make her happy enough, when I may convince her that, for all she now thinks, she never yet saw a token of any evil spirit—of any spirit but the Good One that rules all things. What a sigh she will give—what a free breathing hers will be, the day when I can show her, as plainly as I see myself, that it is nothing but her own fears and griefs that have crossed her path, and she never doubting that they were demons and sprites! Heigh-ho! Where is Erlingsen? It is nothing short of cruel to keep me waiting to-day, of all days, and in this spot of all places, almost within sight of the seater where my poor Erica sits pining, and seeing nothing of the pastures, but only with her mind’s eye, the sea-caves where she thinks these limbs are stretched, cold and helpless, as in a grave. A pretty story I shall have to tell her, if she will only believe it, of another sort of sea-cave.”
To pass the time, he took out the shells he had collected for Erica, and admired them afresh, and planned where she would place them, so as best to adorn their sitting-room, when they were married. Erlingsen arrived before he had been thus engaged five minutes; and indeed before he had been more than a quarter of an hour altogether at the place of meeting.
“My dear master!” exclaimed Rolf, on seeing him coming, “have pity on Erica and me; and hear what I have to tell you, that I may be gone.”
“You shall be gone at once, my good fellow! I will walk with you, and you shall tell your story as we go.”
Rolf shook his head, and objected that he could not, in conscience, take Erlingsen a step further from home than was necessary, as he was only too much wanted there.
“Is that Oddo yonder?” he asked. “He said you would bring him.”
“Yes: he has grown trustworthy of late. We have had fewer heads and hands among us than the times require since Peder grew old and blind, and you were missing, and Hund had to be watched instead of trusted. So we have been obliged to make a man of Oddo, though he has the years of a boy, and the curiosity of a woman. I brought him now, thinking that a messenger might be wanted, to raise the country against the pirates; and I believe Oddo, in his present mood, will be as sure as we know he can be swift.”
“It is well we have a messenger. Where is the bishop?”