kerchief. "Yea!" he resumed peacefully, "the worshippers of
idolatrous images are accursed; they shall have ashes for food and gall
for drink! Let them turn and repent themselves, lest the wrath of God
consume them as straw whirled on the wind. Repent! . . . or ye shall be
cast into everlasting fire. Beauty shall avail not, learning shall avail
not, meekness shall avail not; for the fire of hell is a searching,
endless, destroying--" here Mr. Dyceworthy, by plunging one oar with too
much determination into the watery depths, caught a crab, as the saying
is, and fell violently backward in a somewhat undignified posture.
Recovering himself slowly, he looked about him in a bewildered way, and
for the first time noticed the vacant, solitary appearance of the Fjord.
Some object was missing; he realized what it was immediately--the
English yacht _Eulalie_ was gone from her point of anchorage.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Dyceworthy, half aloud, "what a very sudden
departure! I wonder, now, if those young men have gone for good, or
whether they are coming back again? Pleasant fellows, very pleasant!
flippant, perhaps, but pleasant."

And he smiled benevolently. He had no remembrance of what had occurred,
after he had emptied young Macfarlane's flask of Glenlivet; he had no
idea that he had been almost carried from his garden into his parlor,
and there flung on the sofa and left to sleep off the effects of his
strong tipple; least of all did he dream that he had betrayed any of his
intentions towards Thelma Gueldmar, or given his religious opinions with
such free and undisguised candor. Blissfully ignorant on these points,
he resumed his refractory oars, and after nearly an hour of laborious
effort, succeeded at last in reaching his destination. Arrived at the
little pier, he fastened up his boat, and with the lofty air of a
thoroughly moral man, he walked deliberately up to the door of the
_bonde's_ house. Contrary to custom, it was closed, and the place seemed
strangely silent and deserted. The afternoon heat was so great that the
song-birds were hushed, and in hiding under the cool green leaves,--the
clambering roses round the porch hung down their bright heads for sheer
faintness,--and the only sounds to be heard were the subdued coo-cooing
of the doves on the roof and the soft trickling rush of a little
mountain stream that flowed through the grounds. Some what surprised,
though not abashed, at the evident "not-at-home" look of th