“What! can it be?” And the stranger approached the little man. “But I always heard that Hans of Iceland was of colossal height.”
“Add my renown to my height, and you will see that I am taller than Mount Hecla.”
“Indeed! Tell me, I pray, are you really Hans, a native of Klipstadur in Iceland?”
“It is not in words that I should answer that question,” said the little man, rising; and the look which he cast at the rash stranger made him start back several paces.
“Confine yourself, I beg, to answering it by that glance,” he replied in a voice of entreaty, casting a look toward the exit, which showed his regret that he had ever entered; “I came here in your interests alone.”
Upon entering the hall, the new-comer, having but a glimpse of the person whom he accosted, had retained his self-possession; but when the master of Arbar rose, with his tigerish visage, his thick-set limbs, his bloody shoulders, but half concealed by a skin still green, his huge hands armed with claws, and his fiery eyes, the bold stranger shuddered, like an ignorant traveller who thinks he is handling an eel and feels the sting of a viper.
“My interests?” repeated the monster. “Have you come to tell me of some spring which I may poison, some village I may burn, or some Munkholm musketeer I may slaughter?”
“Perhaps. Listen: The miners of Norway are in a state of revolt. You know what disaster follows in the train of revolt.”
“Yes,—murder, rape, sacrilege, fire, and pillage.”
“All these I offer you.”