The lieutenant was charmed by this double interruption, which seemed to seal a compact for conversation. “May the god Mithra preserve us,” he cried, “from such wise men and such fortunate men! Accursed be the evil-minded zephyr which brought the last demon of Iceland to Norway. I was wrong to say evil-minded, for they say it was a bishop to whom we owe the pleasure of possessing Hans of Klipstadur. If we may believe the story, certain Iceland peasants, having captured little Hans among the Bessestad mountains in his infancy, were about to kill him, as Astyages slew the Bactrian lion’s whelp; but the bishop of Sealholt interfered, and took the cub under his own protection, hoping to make a Christian of the devil. The good bishop tried in a thousand ways to develop his infernal intellect, forgetting that the hemlock cannot be changed into a lily even in the hot-houses of Babylon. So when the young devil grew up, he repaid all this care by escaping one fine night upon the trunk of a tree, across the seas, lighting his flight by setting the bishop’s house on fire. That’s the old women’s account of the way this Icelander came to Norway, and now, thanks to his education, he affords us a perfect type of the monster. Since then the destruction of the Färöe mines, the death of three hundred men crushed beneath the ruins, the overthrow of the hanging rock at Golyn at midnight upon the village below, the fall of Half-Broer bridge from the rocks upon the high-road, the burning of Throndhjem cathedral, the extinction of beacon-lights upon the coast on stormy nights, and countless crimes and murders hidden in Lakes Sparbo or Miösen, or concealed in the caves of Walderhog and Rylass, and in the gorges of the Dovrefjeld, bear witness to the presence of this Ahriman[7] incarnate in the province of Throndhjem. The old women declare that a new hair grows in his beard with every fresh crime; in that case his beard must be as luxuriant as that of the most venerable Assyrian magi. Yet you must have heard, fair lady, how often the governor has tried to stop the extraordinary growth of that beard.” Schumacker again broke the silence. “And has every effort to capture this fellow,” he asked with a look of triumph and an ironical smile, “been unsuccessful? I congratulate the chancellor.” The officer did not understand the ex-chancellor’s sarcasm.