“Use your freedom, young man, while you may. But tell me who you are. I would like, Ordener, to know you by some other name. The son of one of my mortal foes is called Ordener.” “Perhaps, my lord Count, this mortal foe feels greater kindness for you than you for him.” “You evade my question; but keep your secret. I might learn that the fruit which quenches my thirst is a poison which will destroy me.” “Count!” cried Ordener, angrily; “Count!” he repeated, in tones of pity and reproach. “Why should I trust you,” replied Schumacker,--“you who to my very face defend the merciless Guldenlew?” “The viceroy,” gravely interrupted the young man, “has just ordered that for the future you shall be free and unguarded within the entire precinct of the Lion of Schleswig keep. This news I learned at Bergen, and you will doubtless soon hear it from headquarters.” “This is a favor for which I dared not hope, and I thought you were the only person to whom I had mentioned my wish. So they lessen the weight of my chains as that of my years increases; and when old age renders me helpless, they will probably tell me, ‘You are free.’” So saying, the old man smiled bitterly, and added: “And you, young man, do you still cling to your foolish ideas of independence?” “If I had not those same foolish ideas, I should not be here.” “How did you come to Throndhjem?” “Why, on horseback.” “How did you reach Munkholm?” “By boat.” “Poor fool! You think yourself free, and yet you only leave a horse for a boat. It is not your own limbs that carry out your wishes; it is a brute beast, it is material matter; and you call that free will!” “I force animate beings to obey me.” “To assume a right to the obedience of certain beings is to give others a right to command you. Independence exists only in isolation.” “You do not love mankind, noble Count?” The old man laughed sadly. “I weep that I am a man, and I laugh at him who would console me. You will yet learn, if you do not already know, that misfortune creates suspicion as prosperity does ingratitude. Tell me, since you come from Bergen, what favoring winds blow upon Captain Dispolsen. Some good fortune must have befallen him, that he forgets me.” Ordener looked grave and embarrassed. “Dispolsen, my lord Count? I come here to-day to talk to you of him. I know that he possessed your entire confidence.” “You know?” broke in the prisoner, uneasily. “You are mistaken. No one on earth has my confidence. Dispolsen has, it is true, my papers, and very important papers too. He went to Copenhagen, to the king, for me. I may even confess that I reckoned more surely upon him than upon any one else, for in the days of my prosperity I never did him a service.” “Well, noble Count, I saw him to-day--” “Your distress tells me the rest; he is a traitor.” “He is dead.” “Dead!” The prisoner folded his arms and bent his head, then looking up at the young man, said: “I told you some good fortune must have befallen him!”