le sledges. Do you know,' he went on, 'if this were
not the land of my father, I could find it in my heart to go
and live in the land of my mother. It is a noble land, and it
is a fine people. Feudal law never obtained footing there;
every landholder held under no superior; and so there is a
manly, genial independence in all the country-side, not found
everywhere else.'

He went on for some little time to give Wych Hazel pictures of
the scenery, unlike all she had ever known. He knew and loved
it well, and his sketches were given graphically. In the midst
of this Gyda came in again; and Rollo broke off, and asked
her, laughingly, if she had any 'fladbrod.'

'Fresh,' she said. 'Olaf, can't you get her some peaches?'

Rollo went off; and the old woman began to set her table with
bowls and plates and spoons; an oddly carved little tub of
butter, and a pile of thin brown cakes. Having done this, and
Rollo not returning, on the contrary seeming to have found
more than peach trees to detain him, for the sound of hammer
was heard at intervals, the old woman came and stood by Wych
Hazel again. The straw hat was off; and she eyed in a tender
kind of way, wistful too, the fair young face.

'Dear,' she said, in that same wistful way, laying her hand on
the girl's shoulder, 'does he love you?'

Hazel started in extreme surprise; looking up with wide-open
eyes; and more pale than red in her first astonishment.

'He? me?--No!' she said, as the blood came surging back. But
then recollections came too, and possibilities--and eyes and
head both drooped. And with the inevitable instinct of truth
the girl added, under her breath--

'Perhaps--how do I know? I cannot tell!'

By that time head and hands too were on the back of her chair,
and she had turned from Gyda, and her face was out of sight.
With a tender little smile, which she could not see, the old
Norse woman stood beside her, and with tender fingers which
she did feel, smoothed and stroked the hair on each side of
her head. For a few minutes.

'And, dear,' she said presently, in the same soft way, 'do you
love him?'

There are questions, confusing enough when merely propounded
by ourselves, in the solitude of our hearts; but which when
coming first from the lips of another, before they have been
fairly recognized as questions, become simply unbearable.
Hazel shrank away from the words, gentle as they were, with
one of her quick gestures.

'I do not know,' she cri