Part 11 (1/2)

Helga blushed and said nothing, and Pastor Lindal determined to tell Hardy what Kirstin had imputed to him.

As Garth brought round the horses and a man led out Buffalo, Karl was struck with a great wish to ride the English horse. He asked Hardy hesitatingly. Hardy told him to ask his father, who looked at Hardy.

”The horse is likely to give him a fall,” he said, ”and he might get an awkward fall; but boys should learn to ride, and I have no objections if you have not.”

The Pastor a.s.sented, the stirrups were shortened, and Karl mounted.

”Don't pull at his mouth,” said Hardy; ”he does not like a stranger interfering with his mouth.”

”And might I jump him over a ditch on the way home?” begged Karl.

”You may; but I think you had better leave that alone,” said Hardy.

Garth drove, and Hardy chatted with the Pastor, but kept his eye fixed on Karl. Buffalo went along at a smooth trot after the carriage--so far, so well; but when they came to the meadow running down to the Gudenaa, Karl rode into the meadow and galloped at a water ditch in the same manner as he had often seen Hardy do. Buffalo stretched out and took the ditch like a bird, making a longer jump than was at all necessary. There was a loud splash and a scream from Frken Helga, and Buffalo, with an empty saddle, was galloping away.

Hardy took the reins from Garth, as he said coolly, ”Pick the lad out of the ditch, and catch the horse. There is nothing to fear, Herr Pastor.”

Garth called the horse, which stopped. He then a.s.sisted Karl out of the ditch, who was covered with peaty slime, wiped the mud from his face and mouth, and pointed to the carriage. Garth then crossed the ditch on a plank bridge and caught Buffalo, and rode him over the ditch, coming to the side of the carriage. Karl looked foolish.

”There, is nothing to be ashamed of, Karl,” said Hardy. ”I had many a fall before I learnt how to stick on. It is what we all have to go through. Come up by the side of me, little man; you would make your father and sister in a mess.”

The Pastor and his daughter were, for the moment, much frightened by the incident; but Hardy's manner of treating it as a matter of course rea.s.sured them.

”There was no cause for alarm, Herr Pastor,” said Hardy. ”Karl can, if he will, a.s.sure you that the mud at the bottom of the ditch was as soft as eider down. Garth, ride on; I will drive up to the parsonage, and thence to the stables.”

”Thank you for a pleasant day, Hardy,” said the Pastor, as he went into his house.

”Stop, Herr Pastor! here are the pike that were caught in the lake.

Take what you like, and I will send the rest to Widow Rasmussen.”

The pike cooked that day for dinner was, Hardy thought, a fish with as strong a flavour of mud as any fish could possibly possess. The horse-radish sauce, and the sage and bread with which it was stuffed, availed nothing, and Hardy formed a resolution with regard to the lake that afterwards had the result of its being stocked with trout instead of pike.

CHAPTER XI.

”_Piscator._--I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another the next morning.”--_The Complete Angler._

When the tobacco parliament began the evening after the excursion to Rosendal, Pastor Lindal said, ”I have told Herr Hardy the nature of Kirstin's imputations against him, and what he said to-day to you, Helga, was in ignorance of that. I am quite sure that he would never have referred to Kirstin in the way he did had he known everything.

His only thought was that Kirstin was generally suspicious and that was all. He had no idea that when you criticized his treatment of Rosendal that he was comparing your conduct with what was bad.”

Helga looked puzzled; but after a while she rose up from her seat, and extended her hand to Hardy. ”I hope you will forgive me, Herr Hardy, if I have not understood you.”

”Thank you,” said Hardy. ”I had hoped that my character was so simple that it left nothing to the imagination or to construction. It appears to me to be a work of time to acquire the approving confidence of any one in Jutland.”

”I begin to think you are true,” said Helga. ”You have said no single word which has not been borne out; but your opinions differ from ours, and that widely.”

”There is, of course,” said Hardy, ”the difference of nationality, but in the wide world what is best is best, and if anything I do or say differs from your national feeling, yet if it be right and best it is best.”

”Good, very good,” said the Pastor. ”We are all in the hands of a Higher Power, and we have to obey it. It is not for us to criticize and doubt, but to obey.”