Chapter I

"And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?" My sister asked our guest one winter's day. Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send! What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed, Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low, Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft." "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!" He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge, And Tromso freezing in its winter sea. He went and came. But no man knows the track Of his last journey, and he comes not back!