r Mac Donalbain, and Christine started with a look
of mingled joy and alarm.

'He is heartily welcome!' cried the governor, and a tall, well built
man, about thirty years old, entered the hall. He wore a short, green
overcoat with copper buttons. At his broad leather girdle, in which two
pistols were inserted, hung a broad sabre, and in his hand he carried a
double-barrelled gun. His sunburnt face was not regularly handsome, but
the spirit and boldness which characterized it, rendered it
interesting. The wild black eyes, however, which peered from under his
dark brows, and a few wrinkles on his forehead and about his mouth,
gave him a grim and disagreeable expression. Arwed, who glanced now at
him and now at the polished Frenchman, compared the two, and came to
the conclusion that he was not in the very best of company.

'Whence do you come so late, sir Mac Donalbain?' kindly asked the
governor.

'I have been hunting in the Asele Lappmark,' answered the guest, laying
aside his weapons and boldly seating himself near Christine. 'I had got
belated, and the light of your hospitable castle shone so invitingly
that I concluded to ask of you entertainment for the night.'

'This worthy Scot is in a certain sense a brother sufferer of yours,
dear major, in so far as the death of our king has destroyed his
prosperity as well as yours. He had the assurance of an advantageous
post in our army, made a long journey to come here, found his hopes
annihilated by the death of the king, and for the present lives upon
his income, at Hernoesand, awaiting better times.'

'Singular!' remarked Megret, whilst the brother sufferers bowed
silently to each other. 'I was lately at Hernoesand, and could hear
nothing of you there, although I took particular pains to find you.'

'I reside there no longer,' answered Mac Donalbain, not without some
embarrassment. 'A difficulty which I had there, induced me to remove to
Arnaes.'

'A difficulty?' asked Megret, smiling. 'I am sorry for that. I hope it
was not with the public authorities?'

'One readily perceives, colonel,' interfered Christine, with
bitterness, 'that you are a foreigner. In hospitable Sweden, such
questions are not allowable, even from the host himself, much less from
one guest to another.'

'Why so excited, countess?' asked Megret with his customary cold smile.
'If sir Mac Donalbain _will_ not or _cannot_ answer my question, I
shall be content. He has my sympathy, notwithstand