want to change your straw bed for one of these beds of stone, that you
keep me waiting thus?”
Spiagudry trembled more than ever; the two solitary teeth left to him
chattered in his head.
“Excuse me, master,” said he, bending his long back to a level with the
little man; “I was asleep.”
“Do you want me to make you acquainted with a far sounder sleep than
that?”
Spiagudry’s face assumed an expression of terror, the only thing which
could be more comic than his expression of mirth.
“Well! what is it?” continued the little man. “What ails you? Is my
presence disagreeable to you?”
“Oh, my lord and master!” replied the old keeper, “there can surely be
no greater happiness for me than to see your Excellence.”
And the effort which he made to twist his frightened face into a smile
would have unbent the brow of any but the dead.
“Tailless old fox, my Excellence commands you to hand over the clothes
of Gill Stadt.”
As he uttered this name, the little man’s fierce, mocking features grew
dark and sad.
“Oh, master, pardon me, but I no longer have them!” said Spiagudry.
“Your Grace knows that we are obliged to turn over the property of all
workers in the mine to the Crown, the king inheriting by right of their
being his wards.”
The little man turned to the corpse, folded his arms, and said in a
hollow voice: “He is right. These miserable miners are like the eider
duck;[5] their nests are made for them, but their down is plucked from
them.”
Then raising the corpse in his arms and hugging it to his heart, he
began to utter wild yells of love and grief, like the howls of a bear
caressing her young. With these inarticulate sounds were blended, at
intervals, a few words in a strange lingo, which Spiagudry did not
understand.
He let the corpse drop back upon the stone, and turned towards the
guardian.
“Do you know, accursed sorcerer, the name of the ill-fated soldier who
was so unlucky as to be preferred by that girl to Gill?”
And he kicked the cold remains of Guth Stersen.
Spiagudry shook his head.
“Well! by the axe of Ingulf, the first of my race, I will exterminate
every wearer of that uniform!” and he pointed to the officer’s dress.
“He on whom I must be avenged will surely be of the number. I will burn
down the entire forest to consume the poisonous shrub that it contains.
I swore it on the day that Gill died, and I have already given him a
companion that will delight his corpse. Oh, Gill! so there you lie,
lifeless and powerless,--you who outswam the seal, outran the deer; you
who outwrestled the bear in the mountains of Kiölen. There you lie
motionless,--you who traversed the province of Throndhjem, from the
Orkel to the Lake of Miösen, in a single day; you who climbed the peaks
of the Dovrefjeld as the squirrel climbs the oak. There you lie mute
and dumb, Gill,--you who on the stormy summits of Kongsberg sang louder
than the thunder’s roar. Oh, Gill! so it is in vain that for your sake I
filled up the Färöe mines; in vain for your sake I burned the Throndhjem
cathedral. All my labor is in vain, and I shall never see the race of
the children of Iceland, the descendants of Ingulf the Destroyer,
perpetuated in you; you will never inherit my stone axe; but you leave
me the legacy of your skull, from which I may henceforth drink sea-water
and the blood of men.”
With these words he seized the corpse by the head, exclaiming: “Help me,
Spiagudry!” And pulling off his gloves, he displayed his broad hands,
armed with long, hard, crooked nails, like the claws of a wild beast.
Spiagudry, seeing him about to hew off the corpse’s head with his sword,
cried out with unconcealed horror, “Good heavens! master! A dead man!”
“Well,” calmly responded the little man, “would you rather have me
sharpen my blade upon a living one?”
“Oh, let me entreat your Grace--How can your Excellency commit such
profanation? Your Worship--Sir, your Serenity would not--”
“Are you done? Do I require all these titles, living skeleton, to
believe in your deep respect for my sabre?”
“By Saint Waldemar! By Saint Usuph! In the name of Saint Hospitius,
spare the dead!”
“Help me, and do not talk of saints to the devil!”
“My lord,” continued the suppliant Spiagudry, “by your illustrious
ancestor, Saint Ingulf--”
“Ingulf the Destroyer was an outlaw like myself.”
“In the name of Heaven,” said the old man, falling on his knees, “whose
anger I would spare you!”
Impatience overcame the little man. His dull gray eyes flashed like a
couple of live coals.
“Help me!” he repeated, flourishing his sword.
These words were uttered in the voice which might beseem a lion, could
he speak. The keeper, shuddering and half dead with fright, sat down
upon the black stone slab, and held Gill’s cold, damp head in his hands,
while the little man, by means of sword and dagger, removed the crown
with rare skill.
When his task was done, he gazed at the bloody skull for some time,
muttering strange words; then he handed it over to Spiagudry, to be
cleaned and prepared, saying with a sort of howl,--
“And I, when I die, shall not have the comfort of thinking that an heir
to the soul of Ingulf will drink sea-water and the blood of men from out
my skull.”