ead.'

In a moment the troops had reached the carriage.

'Good evening, your excellency!' cried Baumgardt, wheeling about his
horse and raising his hat. Three other officers, who followed him,
likewise wheeled about and remained, courteously greeting the baron,
before and on both sides of the carriage, while the dragoons trotted
past and closed up behind it.

'Good evening, colonel!' answered Goertz serenely. 'Whither so late?'

'To meet your excellency,' said the colonel politely. 'We lost our way
in the driving snow, and have been riding about in a state of
perplexity for two days. We bring with us important news from the
camp.'

'Whatever it may be,' answered Goertz, 'I bring you from Aland yet
better and more important. But it can all be more conveniently told in
a warm room with a bottle of old wine. I shall stop for the night at
the parsonage of Tanum, and bear with me a good bottle case. Will the
gentlemen be my guests? We will pass a pleasant evening together, and
in the morning I will proceed to Frederickshall under your safeguard.'

'It will be an honor to myself and officers,' said the colonel. The
other officers bowed silently, and the carriage rolled rapidly onward,
surrounded by its armed escort, towards the solitary parsonage which,
an old dark-gray mass of stone, with tall dark fir trees rustling about
it, offered no very tempting shelter even in that desert region.

The travellers alighted, and the minister entered one of the lower
rooms of the house. Arwed followed him, prepared for the tragic scene
which was approaching. With impetuous haste, that their victim might
not escape them, the officers pressed in after him, and the last one
closed the door.

'What means this?' asked Goertz, rising, as he remarked it.

The colonel then replaced his hat upon his head and drew his sword,
exclaiming in the roughest military tone, 'in the name of the king,
Goertz, I demand of you the surrender of your sword!'

With surprise and astonishment Goertz started back. At first, unable to
speak, he looked around upon the officers who surrounded him with drawn
swords and insultingly triumphant glances.

This unknightly conduct excited Arwed; his blood boiled, and forgetful
of the mischief that a powerless opposition must cause, he fixed upon
Goertz his eager, enquiring eyes, in which the question was plainly
asked if he should draw the sword, whose hilt he firmly grasped, for
the deliverance of his friend. Bu