Nearly three days of dreary waiting!  How interminable they seemed!  Still, by dint of reassuring words and encouraging arguments, the professor contrived to alleviate the painful suspense.  Now he knew Hulda’s secret, was there not a topic of conversation ever ready?  And what a consolation it was to Joel and his sister to be able to talk of the absent one!

“I am one of the family now,” Sylvius Hogg repeated again and again.  “Yes, I am like an uncle that has just arrived from America or some foreign land.”

And as he was one of the family, they must have no more secrets from him.

Of course he had not failed to notice the children’s constrained manner toward their mother, and he felt satisfied that the reserve the parent displayed had its origin in something besides the uneasiness she felt on Ole Kamp’s account.  He thought he might venture to question Joel; but the latter was unable to give any satisfactory reply.  The professor than ventured to sound Dame Hansen on the subject, but she was so uncommunicative that he was obliged to abandon all hope of obtaining any knowledge of her secret until some future day.

As Sylvius Hogg had predicted, the letter from Help, Junior, reached Dal on the morning of the thirteenth.  Joel started out before daylight to meet the postman, and it was he who brought the letter into the large hall where the professor was sitting with Dame Hansen and her daughter.

There was a moment’s silence.  Hulda, who was as pale as death, was unable to utter a word so violent was the throbbing of her heart, but she seized the hand of her brother, who was equally agitated, and held it tightly.

Sylvius Hogg opened the letter and read it aloud.

To his great regret the missive contained only some very vague information; and the professor was unable to conceal his disappointment from the young people who listened to the letter with tears in their eyes.

The “Viking” had left Saint-Pierre-Miquelon on the date mentioned in Ole Kamp’s last letter.  This fact had been established by the reports received from other vessels which had reached Bergen since the “Viking’s” departure from Newfoundland.  These vessels had seen nothing of the missing ship on their homeward voyage, but they had encountered very bad weather in the neighborhood of Iceland.  Still they had managed to weather the gales; so it was possible that the “Viking” had been equally fortunate, and had merely been delayed somewhere, or had put into some port for repairs.  The “Viking” was a stanch craft, very substantially built, and commanded by Captain Frikel, of Hammersfest, a thoroughly competent officer.  Still, this delay was alarming, and if it continued much longer there would be good reason to fear that the “Viking” had gone down with all on board.

The writer regretted that he had no better news to give the young Hansens, and spoke of Ole Kamp in the most complimentary terms.  He concluded his letter by assuring the professor of his sincere friendship, and that of his family, and by promising to send him without delay any intelligence that might be received at any Norwegian port, in relation to the “Viking.”