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 “O noble protégé of the new mistress, how quickly you have picked up gossip in the servants’ hall! How will you impart your stories to the lady? Will you measure them out by the bushel or count them by the score?”

Now the harper blushed.

“If you yourself had not confessed only a little while ago that you were not the master of your thoughts, I should answer you differently,” he exclaimed, looking at Andrew as proudly and scornfully as Andrew had looked at him. “Little, indeed, do I care for people’s stories, here or elsewhere hatched. It was to escape idle gossip that I came to this lonely place.”

“Such things are not discussed among strangers who have just met,” Andrew sternly replied.

“The stewardess asked me if I had not met with any suspicious characters on my way through the woods, whereupon I mentioned an aged man whom I saw under an old larch tree, reading an old book. The story frightened her; she recognized in the old man a