abruptly as, through a clump of white-birch trees, she
caught sight of a tiny cabin nestled in their green shelter.

"That is Solveig's house; now I remember it! How is it possible that it
has held such a secret for four months, and still looks just as usual?
Let us hurry!" She seized his arm to pull him along. Only when he
wrenched away and came to a dead stop, did she slacken her pace to stare
at him over her shoulder.

"Do you wish to drive me crazy?" he shouted.

She thought him already so, and drew back.

He waited to take a fresh grip on his self-control. When he spoke at
last, it was with labored slowness: "Every week for four months I have
come to this door and asked the Englishman how he fared; and he has not
wished for anything that I have not given it to him. The night they left
him with me, I could have put my fingers around his throat and killed
him; and no one would have known. But I held my hands behind me, and
allowed him to live. So far, I have kept my oath of friendship. Do you
wish me to go in with you and break it now?"

Before she could gather her wits together to answer him, he was gone.

Standing where he had left her, she stared after him, open-mouthed,
until her eye fell upon the cabin among the bushes, when she forgot
everything else in the world. She ran toward it and threw open the door.

The low room was smoky and badly lighted. Before she could distinguish
her lover in the dimness, he was upon her, calling her name over and
over, crushing her hands in his. She cried out, and lifted her face, and
his lips met hers, warm and living. It was the same as though nothing
had happened since last she saw him.

No, not quite the same; she saw that, the instant she drew back. Alwin
was very thin, and in the half-light his face showed white and haggard.
An ugly scar stretched half across his forehead. At the sight of it her
eyes flashed, and she reached up and touched with her lips the fiery
mark.

"How I hate Leif for that!" Then she saw the greatest change of all in
him, the quiet grimness that had come upon him out of his nights of pain
and days of solitude.

"That is unfairly spoken, sweetheart. I have but paid the price I agreed
to pay if luck went against me. Leif has dealt with me only according to
justice; that I will maintain, though I die under his sword at the
last."

She drew a quick, sharp breath. In the joy of recovery, she had let
herself forget that he is only half alive wh