warm. In his belt he carried a formidable hunting-knife, and as he
faced the two intruders on his ground, he rested one hand lightly
yet suggestively on a weighty staff of pine, which was notched all
over with quaint letters and figures, and terminated in a curved
handle at the top. He waited for the young man to speak, and finding
they remained silent, he glanced at them half angrily and again
repeated his words--

"I am the bonde,--Olaf Guldmar. Speak your business and take your
departure; my time is brief!"

Lorimer looked up with his usual nonchalance,--a faint smile playing
about his lips. He saw at once that the old farmer was not a man to
be trifled with, and he raised his cap with a ready grace as he
spoke.

"Fact is," he said frankly, "we've no business here at all--not the
least in the world. We are perfectly aware of it! We are
trespassers, and we know it. Pray don't be hard on us, Mr.--Mr.
Guldmar!"

The bonde glanced him over with a quick lightening of the eyes, and
the suspicion of a smile in the depths of his curly beard. He turned
to Errington.

"Is this true? You came here on purpose, knowing the ground was
private property?"

Errington, in his turn, lifted his cap from his clustering brown
curls with that serene and stately court manner which was to him