The latter, still seated on his stone with folded arms, exclaimed: “Ill befall you, you who come hither guided by an idea, and not by instinct!”
But the stranger, making no reply, seemed studying him carefully.
“Look at me,” he continued, raising his head; “an hour hence you may have no voice left with which to boast that you have seen me.”
The new-comer, moving his light up and down the little man’s person, seemed even more surprised than frightened.
“Well, what astonishes you so much?” rejoined the little man, with a laugh like the breaking of bones. “I have legs and arms like your own; only my limbs will not like yours serve to feed wildcats and crows!”
The stranger at length replied, in a low but confident voice, as if he only feared being heard from without: “Hear me; I come, not as an enemy, but as a friend.”
The other interrupted, “Then why did you not strip off your human form?”
“It is my purpose to do you a service, if you be he whom I seek.”
“You mean, to ask a service. Man, you waste your breath. I can do no service to any save those who are weary of life.”
“By your words,” replied the stranger, “I am sure that you are the man I want; but your stature--Hans of Iceland is a giant. You cannot be he.”
“You are the first who ever doubted it to my face.”
“What! can it be?” And the stranger approached the little man. “But I always heard that Hans of Iceland was of colossal height.”
“Add my renown to my height, and you will see that I am taller than Mount Hecla.”
“Indeed! Tell me, I pray, are you really Hans, a native of Klipstadur in Iceland?”
“It is not in words that I should answer that question,” said the little man, rising; and the look which he cast at the rash stranger made him start back several paces.
“Confine yourself, I beg, to answering it by that glance,” he replied in a voice of entreaty, casting a look toward the exit, which showed his regret that he had ever entered; “I came here in your interests alone.”
Upon entering the hall, the new-comer, having but a glimpse of the person whom he accosted, had retained his self-possession; but when the master of Arbar rose, with his tigerish visage, his thick-set limbs, his bloody shoulders, but half concealed by a skin still green, his huge hands armed with claws, and his fiery eyes, the bold stranger shuddered, like an ignorant traveller who thinks he is handling an eel and feels the sting of a viper.