"His friend's money? What money?" said the youth vaguely.
"Art thou mad, Freskel? What should it be but the bag of coin that thou hast just hidden lest the robbers steal it away."
"Ach, yes; I remember now," answered Freskel, more quietly. "Fear not; the pastor shall know all about it. But now, go home, and to bed, you two, and Freskel will go to the pastor's house."
"But how know we that the robbers are not still lurking about near the cottage?" Tonie asked.
"They have gone," replied Freskel. "I caused them to hear strange voices and to see a strange face, and they were smitten with fear, and fled away, thinking perchance that the ghosts of the old, old robbers of the long ago were claiming them for fellows and mates."
The children stood and stared in horror the half-witted youth.
"Now thou must be altogether mad!" remarked Tonie severely. "Thou! How couldst thou make them afraid with thy voices and faces, when thou wert in the island hiding the bag?"
"Hush Tonie, be not so harsh to him!" whispered Blonda. "Freskel dear," and she turned to the youth with a smile, "thou hast been good to us, and we thank and bless thee. Nay, but now I was saying to my brother that thou wert even as God's angel sent to us in our distress. But and if thou seek to deceive us thus with lying vanities, what, oh what must we think of thee? God's angels of help tell no falsehoods."
"Neither doth Freskel," replied the lad. "Listen, Blonda, for I would not that such a little white-souled thing as thou should think evil of me. Thinkest thou that I was all the time on the island? Nay; I hid away the bag, and also I found what I sought not, and suddenly possessed what I coveted not.
"Then, all at once, I remembered Dorlat and Hervitz, and wondered if they were still at the cottage, and I swam back to another part of the shore, and crept up through the wood, and opened the back door softly, listened, and heard them upstairs hunting, hunting for what was not there. So then, Tonie, I slipped into thy room, and wrapped myself in a sheet from thy bed, and stood in the passage by the back door, this being open and the moonlight coming in. There I stood, half in light and half in shadow, and howled grievously, and struck on the door handle with a knife that I took from the kitchen.