"Say we are benighted travellers and have lost our way.

The _bonde_ can but flay us.

The operation, I believe, is painful, but it cannot last long." "George, you are incorrigible! Suppose we go back and try the other side of this pine-wood?
That might lead us to the front of the house." "I don't see why we shouldn't walk coolly past that window," said Lorimer.

"If any observation is made by the fair 'Marguerite' yonder, we can boldly say we have come to see the _bonde_." Unconsciously they had both raised their voices a little during the latter part of their hasty dialogue, and at the instant when Lorimer uttered the last words, a heavy hand was laid on each of their shoulders,--a hand that turned them round forcibly away from the window they had been gazing at, and a deep, resonant voice addressed them.
"The _bonde_?
Truly, young men, you need seek no further,--I am Olaf Gueldmar!" Had he said, "I am an Emperor!" he could not have spoken with more pride.
Errington and his friend were for a moment speechless,--partly from displeasure at the summary manner in which they had been seized and twisted round like young uprooted saplings, and partly from surprise and involuntary admiration for the personage who had treated them with such scant courtesy.

They saw before them a man somewhat above the middle height, who might have served an aspiring sculptor as a perfect model for a chieftain of old Gaul, or a dauntless Viking.