The new comer was a singular-looking person of middle height, clad in coarse but neat clothes, who looked like a workman just returning from his labor. The insignificant form was surmounted by a compact head, adorned with thick shining black hair and beard, which seemed to harmonize with the body as little as the large hands and feet. Yet the homely pale face was rendered attractive by its expression of innocent, almost childlike simplicity, and if the melancholy man, which seldom happened, opened his thick red lips in a smile, fine white teeth glittered through the coal-black whiskers, and the eyes under the heavy brows could beam with a glance at once so soft and so fiery that it might well win a maiden's heart. Such was the expression with which, when he met Balder and when no cloud darkened his honest mind, he used to gaze at the youth, for whom he cherished a really enthusiastic, almost sentimental tenderness. He never expressed it in words, of which he was usually very sparing, but even to the most superficial observer it was touching to see what power the youth's warm, sunny nature exerted over his rough, bushy-haired companion, so many years his senior. It was a real "secret love," which year by year had increased in strength and enthusiastic ardor, and which would have found no test too severe. All the grace and harmonious charms of life that had been denied to himself, he loved in this beautiful, noble young friend, and in so doing had almost become a little faithless to the other brother, who possessed older claims to his friendship.