"Il n'y a personne qui ait eu autant à souffrir à votre sujet que moi depuis ma naissance! aussi je vous supplie à deux genoux et au nom de Dien, d'avoir pitié de moi!"--Old Breton Ballad.
In a few more days Thelma's engagement to Sir Philip Bruce-Errington was the talk of the neighborhood. The news spread gradually, having been, in the first place, started by Britta, whose triumph in her mistress's happiness was charming to witness. It reached the astonished and reluctant ears of the Reverend Mr. Dyceworthy, whose rage was so great that it destroyed his appetite for twenty-four hours. But the general impression in the neighborhood, where superstition maintained so strong a hold on the primitive and prejudiced minds of the people, was that the reckless young Englishman would rue the day on which he wedded "the white witch of the Altenfjord."
Güldmar was regarded with more suspicion than ever, as having used some secret and diabolical influence to promote the match; and the whole party were, as it seemed, tabooed, and looked upon as given up to the most unholy practices.
Needless to say, the opinions of the villagers had no effect whatever on the good spirits of those who were thus unfavorably criticised, and it would have been difficult to find a merrier group than that assembled one fine morning in front of Güldmar's house, all equipped from top to toe for some evidently unusually lengthy and arduous mountain excursion. Each man carried a long, stout stick, portable flask, knapsack, and rug--the latter two articles strapped together and slung across the shoulder--and they all presented an eminently picturesque appearance, particularly Sigurd, who stood at a little distance from the others, leaning on his tall staff and gazing at Thelma with an air of peculiar pensiveness and abstraction.
She was at that moment busied in adjusting Errington's knapsack more comfortably, her fair, laughing face turned up to his, and her bright eyes alight with love and tender solicitude.
"I've a good mind not to go at all," he whispered in her ear. "I'll come back and stay with you all day."
"You foolish boy!" she answered merrily. "You would miss seeing the grand fall--all for what? To sit with me and watch me spinning, and you would grow so very sleepy! Now, if I were a man, I would go with you."
"I'm very glad you're not a man!" said Errington, pressing the little hand that had just buckled his shoulder-strap. "Though I wish you were going with us. But I say, Thelma, darling, won't you be lonely?"