"Eight weeks! I remember me now. Thou hadst landed thy cargo of Norway deals from our old pine-woods of Aggerhuis—hazel cuts and harrowbills"——
"Ay, ay; and had stowed on board my new lading, being crammed to the hatches with tanned leather, earthenware, and Scottish beer, wheat and malt, for which I expect to realize a goodly sum in round dollars among the cities on the Sound, where I would long since have furled my topsails, but for a rascally English pirate that hath cruised off the mouth of the fiord (or frith as the Scots call it), and I dared not put to sea, though ready to sail, with the free cocquet of the queen’s conservator in my pouch, and my ship hove short upon her cable; for this is my last venture, and under hatches I carry all that must make or mar for ever the fortune of old Hans Knuber."
"Thou didst tell me some news from old Norway, I now remember, on that night Earl Bothwell’s page led me here."
"Why, thou wert like the spectre of a drowned man—St. Erick be with us! But here—drain thy cup of barley ptisan, and I will tell thee more in good time."
Konrad drank the decoction prescribed by the physician, and impatiently said—
"Thou sawest my good friend, the old knight Rosenkrantz, I warrant?"
"Stiff enow, Master Konrad; for he was lying in his coffin, with his spurs on his heels, and his sword girt about him."
Konrad was thunderstruck, and barely able to articulate; he gazed inquiringly at Hans.
"True it is, this sad story," said the seaman, wiping a tear away with the back of his brawny hand; "thou knowest well how all the province loved the bluff old knight, who was never without a smile or a kind word for the humblest among us; and faith he never allowed old Hans Knuber to pass his hall door without putting a long horn of dricka under his belt. But Sir Erick is gone now, and the king’s castle of Bergen (ah! thou rememberest _that_) is a desolate place enough. And honest Sueno Throndson, that most puffy and important of chamberlains, he is gone to his last home too. He went to Zealand in the ship of Jans Thorson, to hang Sir Erick’s shield, with all his arms fairly emblazoned thereon, among those of other dead Knights of the Elephant, in the subterranean chapel of Fredericksborg; but Jans, as thou knowest, could never keep a good reckoning, and, by not allowing duly for variation and leeway, was sucked by the moskenstrom, with all his crew, right down into the bowels of the earth. St. Olaus sain them!"