"I did," replied Hans gravely.
"And how looked he?"
"Stiff enow, Master Konrad; for he was lying in his coffin, with his spurs on his heels, and his sword girt about him."
Konrad was thunderstruck, and barely able to articulate; he gazed inquiringly at Hans.
"True it is, this sad story," said the seaman, wiping a tear away with the back of his brawny hand; "thou knowest well how all the province loved the bluff old knight, who was never without a smile or a kind word for the humblest among us; and faith he never allowed old Hans Knuber to pass his hall door without putting a long horn of dricka under his belt. But Sir Erick is gone now, and the king's castle of Bergen (ah! thou rememberest that) is a desolate place enough. And honest Sueno Throndson, that most puffy and important of chamberlains, he is gone to his last home too. He went to Zealand in the ship of Jans Thorson, to hang Sir Erick's shield, with all his arms fairly emblazoned thereon, among those of other dead Knights of the Elephant, in the subterranean chapel of Fredericksborg; but Jans, as thou knowest, could never keep a good reckoning, and, by not allowing duly for variation and leeway, was sucked by the moskenstrom, with all his crew, right down into the bowels of the earth. St. Olaus sain them!"
"Poor Sir Erick!" said Konrad, heedless of the fate of Jans, while his tears fell fast.
"Dost thou not know that King Frederick had created him Count of Bergen, and Lord of Welsöö, for his services in the old Holstein war?"
"Of all these passages, I have heard nothing."
"His niece, the Lady Anna, will be a countess now, as well as the richest heiress in the kingdom. Baggage that she is! Her uncle never recovered her desertion of his home for the arms of that Scottish lord, whom, if I had him here, I would string up to my gaff peak. By the mass! the old knight's heart was broken, for he loved thee as a son, and Anna as a daughter; but to the devil say I with women, for they all yaw in their course somehow, and require a strong hand at the tiller to make them lie well to the wind. This Anna, God's murrain"——
"Hold thee, Hans Knuber!" said Konrad, with something of his old air of dignity and authority; "for, nevertheless all thy kindness, I will not permit thee to breathe one word that is ungracious of Anna."