and saw Tharald's face contracted into
an angry scowl and his eyes staring grimly at him.

"Well, does the devil ride you?" he burst forth, with his explosive
grunt.

Maurice brushed his hand over his face as if to clear his vision, and
returned Tharald's stare with frank fearlessness. There was no denying
that in this wrinkled, roughly hewn mask there were lines and
suggestions which recalled the free and noble mold of his father's
features. It was a coincidence of physiognomic intentions rather than
actual resemblance--or a resemblance, such as might exist between a
Vandyck portrait and the same face portrayed by some bungling village
artist.

The old man, too, was evidently seeing visions; for he presently began
to wince under Maurice's steady gaze, and some troubled memory dwelt
in his eye as he rose, and took to sauntering distractedly about on
the floor.

"How long is it since your brother Arne fled over the sea?" asked
Maurice, firmly.

"How does that concern you?"

"It does concern me, and I wish to know."

Tharald paused in his walk, and stood long, measuring his antagonist
with a look of slow, pondering defiance. Then he tossed his head back
with a grim laugh, walked toward a carved oaken press in a corner,
took out a ponderous Bible, and flung it down on the table.

"I am beginning to see through your game," he said gruffly. "Here is
the family record. Look into it at your leisure. And if you are right,
let me know. But don't you tell me that that scare about the glacier
wasn't all humbug. If it is your right of entail you want to look up,
I sha'n't stand in your way."

Thereupon he stalked out, slamming the door behind him; the walls
shook, and the windows shivered in their frames.

A vast sheet of gauzy cloud was slowly spreading over the western
expanse of the sky. Through its silvery meshes the full moon looked
down upon the glacier with a grave unconcern. Drifts of cold white
mist hovered here and there over the surface of the ice, rising out of
the deep blue hollows, catching for an instant the moonbeams, and
again gliding away into the shadow of some far-looming peak.

On the little winding path at the end of the glacier stood Maurice,
looking anxiously down toward the valley. Presently a pale speck of
color was seen moving in the fog, and on closer inspection proved to
be that scarlet bodice which in Norway constitutes the middle portion
of a girl's figure. A minute more, and the bodice