The Reverend Mr. Dyceworthy was impatient and disgusted.
"It is a pity," he said with an air of solemn patience, "that this hapless creature, accursèd of God and man, is not placed in some proper abode suitable to the treatment of his affliction. You, Britta, as the favored servant of a--a--well, let us say, of a peculiar mistress, should persuade her to send this--this--person away, lest his vagaries become harmful."
Britta glanced very kindly at Sigurd, who still held her apron with the air of a trustful child.
"He's no more harmful than you are," she said promptly, in answer to the minister's remark. "He's a good fellow and if he talks strangely he can make himself useful,--which is more than can be said of certain people. He can saw and chop the wood, make hay, feed the cattle, pull a strong oar, and sweep and keep the garden,--can't you, Sigurd?" She laid her hand on Sigurd's shoulder, and he nodded his head emphatically, as she enumerated his different talents. "And as for climbing,--he can guide you anywhere over the hills, or up the streams to the big waterfalls--no one better. And if you mean by peculiar,--that my mistress is different to other people, why, I know she is, and am glad of it,--at any rate, she's a great deal too kind-hearted to shut this poor boy up in a house for madmen! He'd die if he couldn't have the fresh air." She paused, out of breath with her rapid utterance, and Mr. Dyceworthy held up his hands in dignified astonishment.
"You talk too glibly, young woman," he said. "It is necessary that I should instruct you without loss of time, as to how you should be sparing of your words in the presence of your superiors and betters--"
Bang! The door was closed with a decision that sent a sharp echo through the silent, heated air, and Mr. Dyceworthy was left to contemplate it at his leisure. Full of wrath, he was about to knock peremptorily and insist that it should be re-opened; but on second thoughts he decided that it was beneath his dignity to argue with a servant, much less with a declared lunatic like Sigurd,--so he made the best of his way back to his boat, thinking gloomily of the hard labor awaiting him in the long pull back to Bosekop.
Other thoughts, too, tortured and harrassed his brain, and as he again took the oars and plied them wearily through the water, he was in an exceedingly unchristian humor. Though a specious hypocrite, he was no fool. He knew the ways of men and women, and he thoroughly realized the present position of affairs. He was quite aware of Thelma Güldmar's exceptional beauty,--and he felt pretty certain that no man could look upon her without admiration. But up to this time, she had been, as it were, secluded from all eyes,--a few haymakers and fishermen were the only persons of the male sex who had ever been within the precincts of Olaf Güldmar's dwelling, with the exception of himself, Dyceworthy,--who, being armed with a letter of introduction from the actual minister of Bosekop, whose place, he, for the present, filled, had intruded his company frequently and persistently on the bonde and his daughter, though he knew himself to be entirely unwelcome. He had gathered together as much as he could, all the scraps of information concerning them; how Olaf Güldmar was credited with having made away with his wife by foul means; how nobody even knew where his wife had come from; how Thelma had been mysteriously educated, and had learned strange things concerning foreign lands, which no one else in the place understood anything about; how she was reputed to be a witch, and was believed to have cast her spells on the unhappy Sigurd, to the destruction of his reason,--and how nobody could tell where Sigurd himself had come from.