Both roast meat and sweet cakes! Why, you live like lords here! When one has slept, as I have, on the naked ground, and lived on bread and water for four or five days—— NILS LYKKE. [_Looks at him with a smile._] Ay, such a life must be hard for one that is wont to sit at the high-table in noble halls—— NILS STENSSON. Noble halls——? NILS LYKKE. But now can you take your ease at Östråt, as long as it likes you. NILS STENSSON. [_Pleased._] Ay? Can I truly? Then I am not to begone again so soon? NILS LYKKE. Nay, that I know not. Sure you yourself can best say that. NILS STENSSON. [_Softly._] Oh, the devil! [_Stretches himself in the chair._] Well, you see—’tis not yet certain. I, for my part, were nothing loath to stay quiet here awhile; but—— NILS LYKKE. ——But you are not in all points your own master? There be other duties and other affairs——? NILS STENSSON. Ay, that is just the rub. Were I to choose, I would rest me at Östråt at least the winter through; I have for the most part led a soldier’s life, and—— [_Interrupts himself suddenly, fills a goblet, and drinks._ Your health, Sir! NILS LYKKE. A soldier’s life? H’m! NILS STENSSON. Nay, what I would have said is this: I have long been eager to see Lady Inger Gyldenlöve, whose fame has spread so wide. She must be a queenly woman,—is’t not so?——The one thing I like not in her, is that she is so cursedly slow to take open action. NILS LYKKE. Open action? NILS STENSSON. Ay, ay, you understand me; I mean she is so loath to take a hand in driving the foreign masters out of the land. NILS LYKKE. Ay, there you are right. But if now you do what you can, you will doubtless move her. NILS STENSSON. I? God knows ’twould but little serve if _I_—— NILS LYKKE. Yet ’tis strange you should seek her here if you have so little hope. NILS STENSSON. What mean you?—Tell me, know you Lady Inger? NILS LYKKE. Surely; since I am her guest—— NILS STENSSON. Ay, but it in nowise follows that you know her. I too am her guest, yet have I never seen so much as her shadow.