“He was my friend,” observed the old man, simply; but the tone he used was a magnet to attract the son’s heart.  “You look very much like him, only his eyes were blue, and yours, as I now see, are dark; but you might be mistaken for him.”

“I sometimes have been,” rejoined Balder, with a half-smile.

“And you are his son!  You are most welcome!” said Mr. MacGentle, with old-fashioned courtesy.

“Forgive me if I have—­if anything has occurred to annoy you.  I am a very old man, Mr. Balder; so old that sometimes I believe I forget how old I am!  And Thor is dead,—­drowned,—­you say?”

“The Baltic, you know, has been the grave of many of our forefathers; I think my father was glad to follow them.  I never saw him in better spirits than during that gale.  We were bound to England from Denmark.”

“Helen’s death saddened him,—­I know,—­I know; he was never gay after that.  But how—­how did—?”

“He would keep the deck, though the helmsman had to be lashed to the wheel.  I think he never cared to see land again, but he was full of spirits and life.  He said this was weather fit for a Viking.

“We were standing by the foremast, holding on by a belaying-pin.  The sea came over the side, and struck him overboard.  I went after him.  Another wave brought me back; but not my father!  I was knocked senseless, and when I came to, it was too late.”

Helwyse’s voice, towards the end of this story, became husky, and Mr. MacGentle’s eyes, as he listened, grew dimmer than ever.

“Ah!” said he, “I shall not die so.  I shall die away gradually, like a breeze that has been blowing this way and that all day, and falls at sunset, no one knows how.  Thor died as became him; and I shall die as becomes me,—­as becomes me!” And so, indeed, he did, a few years later; but not unknown nor uncared for.

Balder Helwyse was a philosopher, no doubt; but it was no part of his wisdom to be indifferent to unstrained sympathy.  He went on to speak further of his own concerns,—­a thing he was little used to do.

It appeared that, from the time he first crossed the Atlantic, being then about four years old, up to the time he had recrossed it, a few weeks ago, he had been journeying to and fro over the Eastern Hemisphere.  His father, who, as well as himself, was American by birth, was the descendant of a Danish family of high station and antiquity, and inherited the restless spirit of his ancestors.  In the course of his early wanderings he had fallen in with MacGentle, who, though somewhat older than Helwyse, was still a young man; and later these two had encountered Hiero Glyphic.  About fifteen years after this it was that Thor appeared at Glyphic’s house in New Jersey, and was welcomed by that singular man as a brother; and here he fell in love with Glyphic’s sister Helen, and married her.  With her he received a large fortune, which the addition of his own made great; and at Glyphic’s death Thor or his heirs would inherit the bulk of the estate left by him.