hout loss of time, as to how you should be
sparing of your words in the presence of your superiors and betters--"

Bang! The door was closed with a decision that sent a sharp echo through
the silent, heated air, and Mr. Dyceworthy was left to contemplate it at
his leisure. Full of wrath, he was about to knock peremptorily and
insist that it should be re-opened; but on second thoughts he decided
that it was beneath his dignity to argue with a servant, much less with
a declared lunatic like Sigurd,--so he made the best of his way back to
his boat, thinking gloomily of the hard labor awaiting him in the long
pull back to Bosekop.

Other thoughts, too, tortured and harrassed his brain, and as he again
took the oars and plied them wearily through the water, he was in an
exceedingly unchristian humor. Though a specious hypocrite, he was no
fool. He knew the ways of men and women, and he thoroughly realized the
present position of affairs. He was quite aware of Thelma Gueldmar's
exceptional beauty,--and he felt pretty certain that no man could look
upon her without admiration. But up to this time, she had been, as it
were, secluded from all eyes,--a few haymakers and fishermen were the
only persons of the male sex who had ever been within the precincts of
Olaf Gueldmar's dwelling, with the exception of himself,
Dyceworthy,--who, being armed with a letter of introduction from the
actual minister of Bosekop, whose place, he, for the present, filled,
had intruded his company frequently and persistently on the _bonde_ and
his daughter, though he knew himself to be entirely unwelcome. He had
gathered together as much as he could, all the scraps of information
concerning them; how Olaf Gueldmar was credited with having made away
with his wife by foul means; how nobody even knew where his wife had
come from; how Thelma had been mysteriously educated, and had learned
strange things concerning foreign lands, which no one else in the place
understood anything about; how she was reputed to be a witch, and was
believed to have cast her spells on the unhappy Sigurd, to the
destruction of his reason,--and how nobody could tell where Sigurd
himself had come from.

All this Mr. Dyceworthy had heard with much interest, and as the sensual
part of his nature was always more or less predominant, he had resolved
in his own mind that here was a field of action suitable to his
abilities. To tame and break the evil spirit in the reputed witch; to