his boast.'

'I thank you heartily for offering me this rare enjoyment,' said Arwed,
and Christine timidly requested to be allowed to make one of the party.

'Certainly, if it will afford you pleasure, and you prefer going with
us to staying at home,' answered her father significantly. 'We have for
some time past become somewhat strange to each other, without my being
able to guess precisely what is the cause of it.'

Christine cast a melancholy and complaining glance upon her neighbor,
Mac Donalbain, and Megret eagerly begged to be added to the company.

'Your society is always agreeable to me,' answered the governor. 'How
stands it with you, sir Mac Donalbain?' he kindly asked the Scot, 'will
you also be of our party? Rich as your Scotland is in natural wonders,
you cannot see this spectacle there. Scandinavia is the only country of
Europe which exhibits it, with the exception of poor Iceland, which
hardly deserves to be regarded as belonging to our part of the world.'

'I do not know when you intend to undertake the excursion,' answered
Mac Donalbain with some embarrassment.

'We start to-morrow morning at day-break,' answered the governor.

'My engagements will not allow me to join the interesting expedition so
soon,' said Mac Donalbain. 'It is barely possible that I may so manage
my affairs as to be able to meet and pay my respects to you at Tornea.'

'It must be a strange business,' said Megret, 'which prevents your
accompanying us, and at the same time permits you to meet us at the end
of our journey.'

'I do not consider, colonel,' cried Mac Donalbain, with a look of
deadly hate and a low bow to the scoffer, 'that I am under any
obligation to account to you for my business, or the manner in which it
is pursued.'

'By no means, sir Mac Donalbain,' answered Megret, returning his bow;
'I am not one of the police-officers of this province, and have no
official inducement to trouble myself about your pursuits.'

'Death and hell! what mean you by that?' exclaimed Mac Donalbain,
springing from his seat,--but Christine pulled him down again and
anxiously whispered to him some words of entreaty.

'Forget not, gentlemen,' cried the governor in an authoritative tone of
voice, 'that you are both my guests, and that it does not become you to
quarrel upon my hearth, where you have both been freely welcomed. I
esteem you both and would resign the society of neither, but I have a
right to demand that you respect th