"Ah! but the dark son of Zernebok selleth foul as well."
"But only to strangers, and when he has none other in hand, perhaps," said Konrad with a smile; for he cordially wished that the enchanted cord had blown the Scottish earl to the Arctic regions.
"Tush, Konrad! dost thou deem my kinsman, stout Christian Alborg of the Biornen, a stranger?"
"We Scots have an old saw among us—That 'tis an ill wind that blows nobody gude," said Hob Ormiston, as he once more assailed the crisp roof of the venison pie with his long Scottish dagger; for it was not then the fashion to furnish guests with knives, and forks were the invention of a century later. "By the mass!" thought he; "the rascal Cupid will assuredly mar thy fortune, my stout Lord Bothwell; for thou fallest in love with every pretty woman, and art ever in some infernal scrape. Thy health, Sir Governor," and bowing to Rosenkrantz, who warmly accorded, Ormiston raised to his lips a great flagon of ale, the creamy froth of which whitened the thick bristles of his black mustaches.
Bothwell and Anna still continued to converse in French.
"And so monsieur grew tired of the court of Denmark?" said Anna, with a pretty lisp in her voice.
"When you left it I soon found that little remained to detain me there. For me the sun had set—the glory had departed. I was ennuyéed to death, for there are no amusements such as I have been accustomed to. I marvel that so warlike a prince as Frederick holds not at times a passage of arms, or even a grand hunting party, among his knights and peers. The greasy counts and ale-swilling barons who wear the crosses of the Elephant and Dannebrog, throng the chambers of his great wooden palace; but never one among them rouses a deer in the woods of Amack, brings a boar to bay, or breaks a spear at the barriers."
"You should have set them an example, my lord," said Anna, with a half pout which she assumed at times.
"These drunken Danes would have laughed me to scorn, for they were much too wary to trust their fools' costards under steel casques for such a purpose. They never in any age knew much of chivalry; and now the new doctrines of Luther and of Calvin, like a cold blast, are laying it with other and holier institutions in the dust. I regret that I did not hang on Frederick's palace gate, my red shield, with the blue cheveron of Hepburn, as a bravado to all comers," continued the flattering Earl in his softest and most insinuating French; while he took in his the white hand of the blushing girl, "in maintenance that Anna of Aggerhuis was the fairest flower in Norway and in Denmark."
"By cock and pie! it might have hung there 'till doomsday for aught that I would have cared anent the matter," muttered Hob Ormiston.