"THAT WORK SHALL BE WROUGHT."
"What a capital job you've made of the story," quoth Yaspard when Garth had finished. "I feel as if I ought to thank you in the name of my great-grand-uncle."
"Just so! Bad boy! Uncle! uncle! uncle!" said Thor from a hillock close by. He spoke so very distinctly, and as if he understood every word, that even the elderly ladies of the party gazed in a sort of awe at the uncanny bird.
"Come here, Thor!" Mr. Adiesen called out, extending a tempting bit of chicken towards Sir Raven, who immediately obeyed the invitation, and hopped to his master's knee. "Why, you old rascal," the scientist went on, "I believe you are the great-grand-nephew of that raven of Hel-ya Water fame; indeed, if I had not taken you myself from the nest when you were only half-fledged, and I was a boy, I would believe that you were the identical bird of the legend."
"If Thor lives as long as the former Thor did," said Mr. Neeven, "he will be over a century when he dies. You remember that fellow, Brüs?"
Of course Mr. Adieson remembered his grandfather's raven, who had been the spy and plague of the lives of both Gaun and Brüs (when they were children), and whom they believed was possessed of an evil spirit.
The conversation drifted into chat about pet birds, until some of the restless young people proposed a rowing match around the island, and out of that project sprang another.
"I should like," said Fred, "to take the little lady of the isle around it in the Mermaid first. She really ought to be the first to circumnavigate Havnholme. Will you trust her in my boat, Miss Adiesen?"
"I suppose it is quite safe?" Aunt Osla asked by way of reply; and Signy answered, "I shall be as safe in the Mermaid as I was on Arab."
"Perhaps Mr. Adiesen will accompany us, to make safety safer," Fred suggested; and the girl seconded his proposal by a "Yes, please, Uncle Brüs."