Five minutes later the traveler was installed in the vehicle, with Hulda beside him.

“But I must have taken your seat,” he remarked to Joel.

“A seat I relinquish to you with the utmost willingness.”

“But perhaps by a little crowding we might make room for you?”

“No, no, I have my legs, sir—­a guide’s legs.  They are as good as any wheels.”

Joel placed himself at the horse’s head, and the little party started for Dal.  The return trip was a gay one, at least on the part of the traveler, who already seemed to consider himself an old friend of the Hansen family.  Before they reached their destination they found themselves calling their companion M. Silvius; and that gentleman unceremoniously called them Hulda and Joel, as if their acquaintance had been one of long standing.

About four o’clock the little belfry of Dal became visible through the trees, and a few minutes afterward the horse stopped in front of the inn.  The traveler alighted from the kariol, though not without considerable difficulty.  Dame Hansen hastened to the door to receive him, and though he did not ask for the best room in the house, it was given to him all the same.

CHAPTER IX.

Sylvius Hogg was the name that the stranger inscribed upon the inn register, that same evening, directly underneath the name of Sandgoist, and there was as great a contrast between the two names as between the men that bore them.  Between them there was nothing whatever in common, either mentally, morally, or physically.  One was generous to a fault, the other was miserly and parsimonious; one was genial and kind-hearted, in the arid soul of the other every noble and humane sentiment seemed to have withered and died.

Sylvius Hogg was nearly sixty years of age, though he did not appear nearly so old.  Tall, erect, and well built, healthy alike in mind and in body, he pleased at first sight with his handsome genial face, upon which he wore no beard, but around which clustered curling locks of silvery hair; eyes which were as smiling as his lips, a broad forehead that bore the impress of noble thoughts, and a full chest in which the heart beat untrammeled.  To all these charms were added an inexhaustible fund of good humor, a refined and liberal nature, and a generous and self-sacrificing disposition.

Sylvius Hogg, of Christiania—­no further recommendation was needed.  That told the whole story.  And he was not only known, appreciated, loved and honored in the Norwegian capital, but throughout the entire country, though the sentiments he inspired in the other half of the Scandinavian kingdom, that is to say in Sweden, were of an entirely different character.

This fact can easily be explained.

Sylvius Hogg was a professor of law at Christiania.  In some lands to be a barrister, civil engineer, physician, or merchant, entitles one to a place on the upper rounds of the social ladder.  It is different in Norway, however.  To be a professor there is to be at the top of the ladder.