"I don't care now who knows how miserable I have been. I did not believe, all the time, that Nipen had anything to do with these misfortunes——"
"Right, Oddo!" exclaimed Rolf now.
"But I was not quite certain; and how could I say a word against it when I was the one to provoke Nipen? Now Rolf is safe, and Erica will be happy again, and I shall not feel as if everybody's eyes were upon me, and know that it is only out of kindness that they do not reproach me as having done all the mischief. I shall hold up my head again now—as some may think I have done all along; but I did not, in my own eyes—no, not in my own eyes, for all these weary days that are gone."
"Well, they are gone now," said Rolf. "Let them go by and be forgotten."
"Nay, not forgotten," said Peder. "How is my boy to learn if he forgets——"
"Don't fear that for me, grandfather," said Oddo, as the tears still streamed down his face. "No fear of that. I shall not forget these last days;—no, not as long as I live."
The comrades who were waiting and watching on the point were duly amazed to see three heads in the boat, on her return; and duly delighted to find that the third was Rolf—alive and no ghost. They asked question upon question, and Rolf answered some fully and truly, while he showed reserve upon others; and at last, when closely pressed, he declared himself too much exhausted to talk, and begged permission to lie down in the bottom of the boat and sleep. Upon this a long silence ensued. It lasted till the farmhouse was in sight at which one of the rowers was to be landed. Oddo then exclaimed—
"I wonder what we all have been thinking about. We have not settled a single thing about what is to be said and done; and here we are almost in sight of home, and Hund's cunning eyes."
"I have settled all about it," replied Rolf, raising himself up from the bottom of the boat, where they all thought he had been sleeping soundly. "My mind," said he, "is quite clear. The first thing I have decided upon is that I may rely on the honour of our friends here to say nothing yet. You have proved your kindness, friends, in coming on this expedition, but for which I should have died in my hole, like a superannuated bear in its den. This is a story that the whole country will hear of; and our grandchildren will tell it, on winter nights, when there is talk of the war that brought the pirates on our coasts. The best way will be for you to set me ashore some way short of home, and ask Erlingsen to meet me at the Black Tarn. There cannot be a quieter place; and I shall be so far on my way to the seater."
"If you will just make a looking-glass of the Black Tarn," said Oddo, "you will see that you have no business to carry such a face as yours to the seater. Erica will die of terror at you for the mountain-demon, before you can persuade her it is only you."