Opening a door to the right the _bonde_ stood courteously aside and bade
them enter, and they found themselves in the very apartment where they
had seen the maiden spinning.
"Sit down, sit down!" said their host hospitably. "We will have wine
directly, and Thelma shall come hither. Thelma! Thelma! Where is the
child? She wanders hither and thither like a mountain sprite. Wait here,
my lads, I shall return directly."
And he strode away, leaving Errington and Lorimer delighted at the
success of their plans, yet somewhat abashed too. There was a peace and
gentle simplicity about the little room in which they were, that touched
the chivalrous sentiment in their natures and kept them silent. On one
side of it, half a dozen broad shelves supported a goodly row of
well-bound volumes, among which the time-honored golden names of
Shakespeare and Scott glittered invitingly, together with such works as
Chapman's Homer, Byron's "Childe Harold," the Poems of John Keats,
Gibbon's Rome, and Plutarch; while mingled with these were the
devotional works in French of Alphonse de Liguori, the "Imitation," also
in French,--and a number of books with titles in Norwegian,--altogether
an heterogenous collection of literature, yet not without interest as
displaying taste and culture on the part of those to whom it belonged.
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