ed. 'His excellency is very angry with you. I have, therefore,
hastened here before him to prepare you for his visit and to beg of
you, as an old, true and zealous servant of your house--if the anger of
the old gentleman should carry him too far, that you will still
remember that he is your father, and listen to what he may please to
say to you, not as a captain of the guards, but as a son.'

'I thank you for the warning, worthy friend, and will obey you,'
answered Arwed.

The door now opened, and with a flaming, red face, the old counsellor
entered.

'The old tell-tale already here,' cried he, 'plotting with the lost
son? I would be alone with the captain.'

Brodin made a submissive, exculpatory gesture, whereby he at the same
time seemed to beg permission to remain--but the old man pointed
angrily towards the door, and Brodin unwillingly retired.

'So, you have fought to-day with major general Baumgardt?' asked the
father with assumed calmness.

'Yes,' answered the son, 'but without any important consequences. I am
but slightly injured, and his life is also out of danger.'

'Right!' cried the father, with somewhat increasing vehemence. 'So the
trifle of rendering a general, who is particularly valued by the queen,
a cripple for life, is a mere ordinary affair.'

He walked two or three times up and down the room, and then opened a
window and looked out. After a while he turned again towards Arwed.

'God is my witness,' cried he, shutting the window with great violence,
'God is my witness, that I have been forbearing as an angel, but your
conduct would make an Epictetus furious. To challenge the major general
just at the moment when the queen, by promotion and knighthood, had
declared him her favorite--to shatter his arm, and then confidentially
to tell him that it was on account of his arresting Goertz, to which
arrest Ulrika is probably indebted for her crown! Would it indeed be
possible, by the widest stretch of fancy, to imagine a proceeding more
senseless and ruinous than yours?'

'The party spirit,' answered Arwed, 'which divides our country, early
teaches every Swede to choose his side; and, in a land so disturbed by
political storms, a peculiar disgrace seems to rest upon neutrality.
Blame me not then, my dear father, if I also have formed my principles;
and be not angry because they are not exactly like yours. If you have
nothing to pardon me for, except that, having once chosen my party, I
have re