"Alas, Svartberg, have I not already told you I am betrothed to Martin Thy!" cried the alarmed maiden anxiously. "Pshaw!" cried Svartberg, "you do not expect me to swallow that fable? All lie and deception, as sure as there is a God in heaven. I have long seen through the old fox, but now I know him, and he shall not stand long in any body's way. As to any harm he may have told you of me, the knave lies in his throat." "Svartberg!" exclaimed Christina, terrified at the increasing vehemence of the Swede's tone and manner, "you have power----" "Ha!" interrupted the soldier, "that have I, and know how to use it. Christina, I cannot exist without you--by the living God I cannot! and though you were betrothed to Sweden's king, to me you must belong--mine you shall be! I have here," he continued, in a hurried and passionate whisper, "two comrades, and a cart to convey you to Nyeborg. I shall soon have served my time, and then will I take you home to my old mother in Dalecarlia, and there you shall live like a queen, or my name is not Jon Svartberg! Come! every moment is precious!" The stalwart sergeant seized the fainting girl by the waist, raised her in his arms, regardless of her feeble struggles, and hurried to the door. Just then a loud uproar arose outside the house. Svartberg started, laid Christina in an arm-chair, and listened. The noise increased; shouts and cries, and two pistol-shots, reached his ear; and then Hans Thorsen and Martin Thy, followed by a legion of rustics armed with axes and hay-forks, poured into the room through both its doors. Surprised, but no way disconcerted, by their sudden appearance and menacing mien, the sergeant, with a military eye for a good position, retreated into a corner, where the oak table served him as barricade, and laid hand upon a pistol in his belt. Either on account of the great odds against him, or through fear of injuring Christina, or because consciousness of evil-doing robbed him of his usual decision, he did not use the weapon, however, but preferred flight to a contest whose issue could hardly have been advantageous to him. Springing actively upon the long bench below the window, and still keeping his face to the enemy, he set his heavily-booted leg against the casement, which gave way, and fell with a clatter and jingling into the garden. Then, with his favourite exclamation, "Ha! in the devil's name!" he swung himself, light as a bird, through the opening. A peasant, on sentry below, essayed to seize him, but was prostrated by a blow that might have felled an ox; and the fugitive sped through the garden, his accoutrements rattling as he ran, and indicating the direction he took. All this while the peasants were not idle: some followed him through the window, others through the door; and as it was nearly full moon and the sky tolerably clear, the foremost distinctly saw him run across the meadow, and disappear amongst the oaks.