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Meantime, they had reached the stables. And here they stopped. Ørlygur seemed only waiting for them to take their leave; but the visitors still hoped for some opening—something to happen, they did not quite know what.

Then suddenly the quivering notes of a violin were heard. Here was a welcome excuse for delaying their departure. Ørlygur was listening with delight, as so often before, to his son’s playing; for a while all three stood motionless.

Ørlygur smiled; a smile that covered, perhaps, both his admiration and his aversion—the two conflicting feelings which Ormarr’s playing always seemed to awaken at the same time.

Then Sera Daniel spoke—simply and naturally:

“How beautiful!” But at the same moment he reflected that he ought to know Ørlygur’s character better than to say things like that. And by way of altering the impression of his words, he added, in an entirely different tone:

“There is the making of a fortune in that music.”

Ørlygur à Borg did not grasp his meaning. And though he knew that Sera Daniel would never dare to make fun of him, “the King,” to his face, he was on his guard. He looked at the speaker with a glance of cold inquiry.