Rush out, Salome! alarm the neighborhood and force the kidnapper to give up his booty!  After Thor’s kindness to you, will you be false to him?  Besides, what motive have you for unfaithfulness?  Grant that you love Manetho,—­what harm, save to his revengeful passion, could result from thwarting him?

Salome acted oddly on this occasion,—­it would seem, irrationally.  But that which appears to the spectator but a trivial modification may have vital weight with the actor.  Had Manetho taken Balder, for example, Salome might have pursued another and more intelligible course than the one she actually took.  She hurried out of the door and caught Manetho by the arm before he was twenty paces on his way.  He turned, savage but frightened, setting down the little girl but not letting go her hand.  She was in her happiest humor, and informed Nurse that she was to be queen of fairy-land!

Nurse lifted the veil from her face and looked steadfastly at Manetho with her one eye.  It was enough,—­he saw in her but a hideous object,—­would never know her for the bright girl he had once professed to love.  Salome gave one sob, containing more of womanly emotion than could be written down in many words, and then was quiet and self-possessed.  Manetho did not offer to escape, but stood on his guard; half prepared, however,—­from something in the woman’s manner,—­to find her a confederate.

“S’e come too?” chirped the unconscious little maiden.

But Manetho’s attention was turned to some words that Salome was writing in a little blank-book which she always carried in her pocket She offered to help him carry off the child, on condition of being herself one of the party!

He looked narrowly at the woman, but could make nothing by his scrutiny.  Was it love for the child that prompted her behavior?  No; for she could easily have raised the neighborhood against him.  She completely puzzled him, and she would give no explanations.  What if he should accept her offer?  She would be an advantage as well as an inconvenience.  The child would have the care to which it had been accustomed, and Manetho would thus be spared much embarrassment.  When the woman’s help became superfluous, it would not be difficult to give her the slip.

There was small leisure for reflection.  An agreement was made,—­on Salome’s part, with a secret sense of intense triumph, not unmixed with fear and pain.  She caught up Master Balder and his dandelions, kissed and hugged him violently, and locked him into the nursery; where he was found some hours afterwards by his father, in a state of great hunger and indignation.  But the little dark-haired maiden was no more.  She was gone to her kingdom of fairy-land, and Nurse with her.  Long mourned Balder for his vanished playmate!

Salome has kept her secret well.  And now, there she sits, her long-lost baby’s head in her lap, thinking of old times; and the longer she thinks, the more she softens and expands.  Has she done a great wrong in her life?  Surely she has suffered greatly, and in a manner that might well wither her to the core.  But there must still have been a germ of life in the shrivelled seed, which this night—­memorable in her existence—­has begun to quicken.