“No highness,” says the big one. “But if you will please to come with us, my master will attend to all your needs.”

I didn’t like the sound of this, somehow.

“Who is your master, then?”

“If you please, highness, I am to ask you only to come with us. Please, highness.”

He was civil enough, but I didn’t like it.

“I want a horse, my good fellow, not to see your master. You know who I am, it seems. Well, bring me a horse directly.”

“Please, highness,” he repeated stolidly. “You will come with us. My master commands.”

At this I became very princely and peremptory, but it didn’t do a straw’s worth of good. He just stood there insisting, and my bowels went more chilly every moment. I hectored and stormed and threatened, but in the end there was nothing for it. I went with them, leaving the farm couple round-eyed behind us.

To my consternation they led me straight back towards the Jotun Gipfel, but although I protested they held their course, the big fellow turning every now and then to mutter apologies, while his pals kept their muskets handy and their eyes carefully on me. I was beside myself with fright and anger; who the devil were they, I demanded, and where was I being taken? But not a word of sense was to be had from them, and the only consolation I could take was a vague feeling that whoever they were, they weren’t Rudi’s creatures, and didn’t seem to mean me any harm—as yet.

How far we tramped I don’t know, but it must have taken fully two hours. I wouldn’t have believed the Jotun Gipfel was so extensive, or so dense, but we seemed to be moving into deeper forest all the time, along the foot of the crags. The sun was westering, so far as I could judge, when I saw people ahead, and then we were in a little clearing with perhaps a dozen fellows waiting for us; stalwart peasants like my four guards, and all of them armed.

There was a little cabin half-hidden among the bushes at the foot of a small cliff that ran up into the overhanging forest, and before the cabin stood two men. One was a tall, slender, serious-looking chap dressed like a quality lawyer, and grotesquely out of place here; the other was burly and short, in a corduroy suit and leggings, the picture of a country squire or retired military man. He had grizzled, close-cropped hair, a bulldog face, and a black patch over one eye. He was smoking a pipe.

They stood staring at me, and then the tall one turned and said urgently to his companion: “He is wrong. I am sure he is wrong.”