"Yes," said Sir Archie, "you must come with me, Elsalill, or else I shall be drawn down to my destruction." He began to whisper to the girl ever more tenderly, and again she thought to herself: "Were it not more pleasing to God and men that he be allowed to atone for his evil life and become a righteous man? Whom can it profit if he be punished with death?" As these thoughts were in Elsalill's mind two men came by on their way to the tavern. When Sir Archie marked that they cast curious eyes on him and the maid, he said to her: "Come, Elsalill, I will take you home. I would not that any should see you had come to the tavern for me." Then Elsalill looked up, as though suddenly calling to mind that she had another duty to perform than that of listening to Sir Archie. But her heart smote her when she thought of betraying his crime. "If you deliver him to the hangman, I must break," her heart said to her. And Sir Archie drew the girl's cloak more tightly about her and led her out into the street. He walked with her all the way to Torarin's cabin, and she noticed that whenever the storm blew fiercely in their faces, he placed himself before her and screened her. Elsalill thought, all the time they were walking: "My dead foster sister knew nothing of this, that he would atone for his crime and become a good man." Sir Archie still whispered the tenderest words in Elsalill's ear. And the longer she listened to him, the more firmly she believed in him. "It must have been that I might hear Sir Archie whisper such words as these in my ear that my foster sister called me forth," she thought. "She loves me so dearly. She desires not my unhappiness but my happiness." And as they stopped before the cabin, Sir Archie asked Elsalill once more whether she would go with him across the sea. And Elsalill answered that with God's help she would go. CHAPTER VII UNREST Next day the storm had ceased. The weather was now milder, but it had caused little shrinking of the ice and the sea was closed as fast as ever. When Elsalill awoke in the morning she thought: "It is surely better that a wicked man repent and live according to God's commandments than that he be punished with death." That day Sir Archie sent a messenger to Elsalill, and he brought her a heavy armlet of gold. And Elsalill was glad that Sir Archie had thought of giving her pleasure, and she thanked the messenger and accepted the gift. But when he was gone she fell to thinking that this armlet had been bought for her with Herr Arne's money. When she thought of this she could not endure to look on it. She plucked it from her arm and threw it far away.