ll right now. Run along and fish."

The river welcomes me like an old friend. The tune that it sings is the
same that the flowing water repeats all around the world. Not otherwise
do the lively rapids carry the familiar air, and the larger falls drone
out a burly bass, along the west branch of the Penobscot, or down the
valley of the Bouquet. But here there are no forests to conceal the
course of the stream. It lies as free to the view as a child's thought.
As I follow on from pool to pool, picking out a good trout here and
there, now from a rocky corner edged with foam, now from a swift
gravelly run, now from a snug hiding-place that the current has hollowed
out beneath the bank, all the way I can see the fortress far above me on
the hillside.

I am as sure that it has already surrendered to Graygown as if I could
discern her white banner of crochet-work floating from the battlements.

Just before dark, I climb the hill with a heavy basket of fish. The
castle gate is open. The scent of chicken and pancakes salutes the weary
pilgrim. In a cosy little parlour, adorned with fluffy mats and pictures
framed in pine-cones, lit by a hanging lamp with glass pendants,
sits the mistress of the occasion, calmly triumphant and plying her
crochet-needle.

There is something mysterious about a woman's fancy-work. It seems
to have all the soothing charm of the tobacco-plant, without its
inconveniences. Just to see her tranquillity, while she relaxes her mind
and busies her fingers with a bit of tatting or embroidery or crochet,
gives me a sense of being domesticated, a "homey" feeling, anywhere in
the wide world.

If you ever go to Norway, you must be sure to see the Loenvand. You can
set out from the comfortable hotel at Faleide, go up the Indvik Fjord
in a rowboat, cross over a two-mile hill on foot or by carriage, spend a
happy day on the lake, and return to your inn in time for a late supper.
The lake is perhaps the most beautiful in Norway. Long and narrow, it
lies like a priceless emerald of palest green, hidden and guarded by
jealous mountains. It is fed by huge glaciers, which hang over the
shoulders of the hills like ragged cloaks of ice.

As we row along the shore, trolling in vain for the trout that live in
the ice-cold water, fragments of the tattered cloth-of-silver far above
us, on the opposite side, are loosened by the touch of the summer
sun, and fall from the precipice. They drift downward, at first,
as nois