it may, the effect was equally thrilling when Harald Kaas, seated
in his log chair by the fireside, his feet on the bearskin, opened
his shirt to show us the scars on his hairy chest (and what scars
they were!) which had been made by the bear's teeth, when he had
driven his knife, right up to the haft, into the monster's heart.
All the queer tankards, and cupboards, and carved chairs listened
with their wonted impassiveness.

Harald Kaas was sixty, when, in the month of July, he sailed into
the bay accompanied by four ladies whom he had brought from the
steamer--an elderly lady and three young ones, all related to him.
They were to stay with him until August.

They occupied the upper storey. From it they could hear him
walking about and grunting below them. They began to feel a little
nervous. Indeed, three of them had had serious misgivings about
accepting the invitation; and these misgivings were not diminished
when, next morning, they saw Kaas composedly strolling up from the
sea stark naked!

They screamed, and, gathering together, still in their nightgowns,
held a council of war as to the advisability of leaving at once;
but when one of them cried "You should not have called us, Aunt,
and then we should not have seen him," they could not help
laughing, and therewith the whole affair ended. Certainly they
were a little stiff at breakfast; but when Harold Kaas began a
story about an old black mare of his which was in love with a
young brown horse over at the Dean's, and which plunged madly if
any other horse came near her, but, on the other hand, put her
head coaxingly on one side and whinnied "like a dainty girl"