“The hurricane is followed by a hurricane, each avalanche brings down
another avalanche, but I shall be the last of my race. Why did not Gill
hate every human face even as I do? What demon foe to the demon of
Ingulf urged him into those fatal mines in search of a handful of gold?”
Spiagudry, who now returned with Gill’s skull, interrupted him: “Your
Excellency is right; even gold, as Snorri Sturleson says, may often be
bought at too high a price.”
“You remind me,” said the little man, “of a commission I have for you;
here is an iron casket which I found upon yonder officer, all of whose
property, as you see, did not fall into your possession; it is so firmly
fastened, that it must contain gold,--the only thing precious in the
eyes of men. You will give it to widow Stadt, in Thoctree village, to
pay her for her son.”
He drew a small iron box from his reindeer-skin knapsack. Spiagudry
received it with a low bow.
“Obey my orders faithfully,” said the little man, with a piercing
glance; “remember that nothing can prevent two demons from meeting; I
think you are even more of a coward than a miser, and you will answer to
me for that box.”
“Oh, master, with my soul!”
“Not at all. With your flesh and bones.”
At this moment the outer door of the Spladgest echoed with a loud knock.
The little man was amazed; Spiagudry tottered, and shaded his lamp with
his hand.
“Who is there?” growled the little man. “And you, old villain, how you
will shake when you hear the last trump sound, if you shiver so now!”
A second and louder knock was heard.
“It is some dead man in haste to enter,” said the little man.
“No, master,” muttered Spiagudry, “no corpses are brought here after
midnight.”
“Living or dead, he drives me hence. You, Spiagudry, be faithful and be
dumb. I swear to you, by the spirit of Ingulf and the skull of Gill,
that you shall see the dead bodies of the entire regiment of Munkholm
pass through your hostelry in review.”
And the little man, binding Gill’s skull to his belt, and drawing on his
gloves, hurried, with the nimbleness of a goat, and by the help of
Spiagudry’s shoulders, through the opening in the roof, where he
vanished.
A third knock shook the whole Spladgest, and a voice outside commanded
him to open in the name of the king and viceroy. Then the keeper, moved
alike by two different terrors,--one of which might be called the terror
of memory, and the other of hope,--hurried toward the low door, and
opened it.