For the rest, so far as sober history can trace them back, they seem to have been a noble and adventurous race of men, loving the sea, but often taking a high part in the political affairs of the nation. The sons were uniformly fair, the daughters dark—owing, it was said, to the first mother of the line having been a dark-eyed woman. But the advent of a dark-eyed heir had been foretold from the earliest times, not without ominous-albeit obscure-hints as to the part he would play in the family history. The precise wording of no one of these old prophecies has come down to us; but they appear in general to have intimated that the dark-eyed Helwyse would bring the race to a ruinous and disgraceful end, saving on the fulfilment of certain conditions too improbable to deserve recording. The dead must return to life, the living must forsake their identity, love must unite the blood of the victim to that of the destroyer, and other yet stranger things must happen, before the danger could be averted. The superstitious reverence paid to enigmatical utterances of this kind has long passed away, and if any meaning ever attaches to them, it is apt to be sadly common-place. Nevertheless, when Balder was born, and the hereditary blue eyes were found wanting, the circumstance was doubtless the occasion of much half-serious banter among those to whom the ominous prophecies were familiar. Certainly the young man had already made one grave mistake; and he could hardly have followed it up by a more disgraceful retreat than this to the hairdresser's saloon. The shades of his heroic forefathers in Valhalla would disown his shorn head with indignant scorn; for their golden locks had ever been sacred to them as their honour. When the Roman Empire was invaded by the Goths and Vandals, a Helwyse-so runs the tale-was taken prisoner and brought before the Roman General. The latter summoned a barber and a headsman, and informed the captive that he might choose between forfeiting his head, and that which grew upon it. As to the precise words in which the northern warrior couched his reply, historians vary; but they are agreed upon the important point that his head was chopped off without delay! Did the memory of these things bring no blush to Balder's cheeks? There he sat, as indifferent, to all outward seeming, as though he were asleep. This, however, may have been the apathy consequent upon the abandonment of lofty pretensions and sublime ambitions, betraying a proud sensitiveness rather than any lack of feeling. Balder Helwyse was not the first man of parts to appear in an undignified and unheroic light. The foremost man of all this world whined, like a sick girl, for his physic, and preposterously over-estimated his swimming powers: yet his greatness found him out! In sober earnest, however-what real importance attaches to Helwyse's doings at this juncture? Physically and mentally weary, he may have acted from the most ordinary motives. As to his having entertained any superstitious crotchets about losing his hair-the spirit of the age forbid! XIII. THROUGH A GLASS. THE hairdresser possessed the quality (now rare among his class) of unlimited and selfenjoying loquacity;-soothing, because its little waves lapsed in objectless prattle upon the shore of the apprehension, to be attended to or not at pleasure. The sentences were without regular head or tail, and were connected rather by a friendly arrangement among themselves than by any logical sequence; while the everrecurring pauses at interesting moments of work, wrought a recognition of how caressing had been the easy voice, and accumulated a lazy disposition to hear it continue. Having decked Helwyse for the sacrifice, the little man had murmured confidentially in his ear, |