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." "But it is not a question of religion," said Helga, "if we Danes differ in opinion from the English or if our customs are different." "Just so," said the Pastor; "but God is over all. Nation may call to nation and generation to generation; but, as Herr Hardy suggests, nationalities may differ, but what is best in thought and deed will come to the front." "But why should he despise us?" asked Helga. "Herr Hardy despises nothing," replied her father. "He sees and appreciates what is good in us, and sympathizes with the stability of the Danish character, but he naturally values the broader thought in everyday life of the English people." "That is because he is an Englishman," retorted Helga. "You forget, Helga, that Herr Hardy is present," said her father, "and what you have said would pain him. If he be an Englishman he cannot help it, and if he should be English in thought and character it is not what you should condemn. He is only true to himself. Since he has been with us, what has his conduct been?" Helga knitted in silence; she felt the justice of her father's reproof and her injustice to Hardy. Hardy, to change the conversation, said to Karl, "Well, Karl, you have not told us how soft you found the ditch that you went to the bottom of." "I do not know how I fell off," said Karl. "I was suddenly under water in the ditch." "You fell off as Buffalo was about to jump. He checked his stride before he jumped, and then you tumbled off," said Hardy. "What should I have done?" asked Karl.