"Death!" cried Ulrika. "Olaf Güldmar dead! Impossible! Only last night I saw him in the pride of his strength,—and thought I never had beheld so goodly a man. Lord, Lord! That he should be dead!"
In a few words Svensen related all that had happened, with the exception of the fire-burial in the Fjord.
But Ulrika immediately asked, "Is his body still in the house?"
Svensen looked at her darkly. "Hast thou never heard Ulrika," he said solemnly, "that the bodies of men who follow Olaf Güldmar's creed, disappear as soon as the life departs from them? It is a mystery—strange and terrible! But this is true—my master's sailing-ship has gone, and his body with it—and I know not where!"
Ulrika surveyed him steadily with a slow, incredulous smile. After a pause, she said—
"Fidelity in a servant is good, Valdemar Svensen! I know you well—I also know that a pagan shrinks from Christian burial. Enough said—I will ask no more—but if Olaf Güldmar's ship's has gone, and he with it,—I warn you, the village will wonder."
"I cannot help it," said Svensen with cold brevity. "I have spoken truth—he has gone! I saw him die—and then vanish. Believe it or not as you will, I care not!"
And he drove on in silence. Ulrika was silent too.
She had known Valdemar Svensen for many years—he was a man universally liked and respected at all the harbors and different fishing-stations of Norway, and his life was an open book to everybody, with the exception of one page, which was turned down and sealed,—this was the question of his religious belief. No one knew what form of faith he followed,—it was only when he went to live with the bonde, after Thelma's marriage,—that the nature of his creed was dimly suspected. But Ulrika had no dislike for him on this account,—her opinions had changed very much during the past few months. As devout a Lutheran as ever, she began to entertain a little more of the true spirit of Christianity—that spirit of gentle and patient tolerance which, full of forbearance towards all humanity, is willing to admit the possibility of a little good in everything, even in the blind tenets of a heathen creed. Part of this alteration in her was due to the gratitude she secretly felt towards the Güldmar family, for having saved from destruction,—albeit unconscious of his parentage,—Sigurd, the child she had attempted to murder. The hideous malevolence of Lovisa Elsland's nature had shown her that there may be bad Lutherans,—the invariable tenderness displayed by the Güldmars for her unrecognized, helpless and distraught son,—had proved to her that there may be good heathens. Hearing thus suddenly of the bonde's death, she was strangely affected—she could almost have wept. She felt perfectly convinced that Svensen had made away with his master's body by some mysterious rite connected with pagan belief,—she knew that Güldmar himself, according to rumor, had buried his own wife in some unknown spot, with strange and weird ceremonials, but she was inclined to be tolerant,—and glancing at Svensen's grave, pained face from time to time as she sat beside him in the sledge, she resolved to ask him no more questions on the subject, but to accept and support, if necessary, the theory he had so emphatically set forth,—namely, the mystical evanishment of the corpse by some supernatural agency.
As they neared their destination, she began to think of Thelma, the beautiful, proud girl whom she remembered best as standing on a little green-tufted hillock with a cluster of pansies in her hand, and Sigurd—Sigurd clinging fondly to her white skirts, with a wealth of passionate devotion in his upturned, melancholy, blue eyes. Ulrika had seen her but once since then,—and that was on the occasion when, at the threat of Lovisa Elsland, and the command of the Reverend Mr. Dyceworthy, she had given her Sir Philip Errington's card, with the false message written on it that had decoyed her for a time into the wily minister's power. She felt a thrill of shame as she remembered the part she had played in that cruel trick,—and reverting once more to the memory of Sigurd, whose tragic end at the Fall of Njedegorze she had learned through Valdemar, she resolved to make amends now that she had the chance, and to do her best for Thelma in her suffering and trouble.