On the evening of the second day Drost Aage had not as yet returned from his expedition, as the protector of Marsk Stig's captive daughters. He had conducted them without impediment to the king's castle at Vordingborg; but as he was about to ride into the arched gateway he was attacked from behind, and dangerously wounded, by an unknown hand. Aage was carried, in a state of insensibility, into the castle, while his huntsmen vainly pursued his stealthy foe, in whom they thought they recognised the same tall horseman in peasant attire, and mounted upon the little Zealand horse without a saddle, whom they had several times seen on the road, but who always vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, and who they conjectured must have followed their track by secret paths from Esrom. The commandant at Vordingborg had received the wounded knight, with great alarm; he instantly recognised in him the young Drost, and the favourite of the king. As soon as Drost Aage had recovered his consciousness, he informed the commandant of the rank and position of the two ladies, and also that they were to be considered as state prisoners, for whose security he would be responsible, although their stay here was to be rendered as agreeable as under such circumstances it was possible to make it. The commandant instantly ordered the gates to be barred, and sentinels to be stationed; but he threw open the interior of the castle without reserve to his guests, and a messenger was dispatched to inform the king of what had happened. Meanwhile the assembled party at Sjoeborg were in some degree tranquillised, when on the noon of the third day the king again made his appearance at table, where he sat, with a calm and almost cheerful countenance, between his brother Christopher and the papal legate. Their secret negociation seemed to have taken a friendly turn, and great reliance was placed in King Eric's manly sense and political wisdom. Report said that the Italian prelate seemed to bear our northern climate excellently well, and perhaps might not be disinclined to take up his abode here, if the king should come to an agreement with the papal see, and the archbishoprick of Lund became vacant by the deposition of Grand. It was conjectured that the formal annulment of the archbishop's authority, and of his own self-empowered sentence of excommunication, had been the subject of the king's conferences with the unfathomable Isarnus, and it was reasonably hoped that the cardinal would grant this important condition of the archbishop's release, ere the king fulfilled the demands of the pope. But some days elapsed without any apparent decision being taken. Meanwhile, no change took place in the condition of the captive archbishop, who remained in close confinement.