ow, holding her hand,
and trying to say all sorts of kind and amusing things, to which she
seemed to pay little attention. Pehrson Dahlsjoe took Elis--who, seized
by gloomy presentiments, was keeping a darksome glance riveted on the
pair--into another room, and said:

"'Well, Elis, you will soon have it in your power to give me a proof of
your regard and sincerity. I have always looked upon you as a son, but
you will soon take the place of one altogether. The man whom you see in
there is a well-to-do merchant, Eric Olavsen by name, from Goethaborg.
I am giving him my daughter for his wife, at his desire. He will take
her to Goethaborg, and then you will be left alone with me, my only
support in my declining years. Well, you say nothing? You turn pale? I
trust this step doesn't displease you, and that now that I'm going to
lose my daughter you are not going to leave me too? But I hear Olavsen
mentioning my name; I must go in.'

"With which he went back to the room.

"Elis felt a thousand red-hot irons tearing at his heart. He could find
no words, no tears. In wild despair he ran out, out of the house, away
to the great mine-shrift.

"That monstrous chasm had a terrible appearance by day; but now, when
night had fallen, and the moon was just peeping down into it, the
desolate crags looked like a numberless horde of horrible monsters, the
direful brood of hell, rolling and writhing, in wildest confusion, all
about its reeking sides and clefts, and flashing up fiery eyes, and
shooting forth glowing claws to clutch the race of mortals.

"Torbern, Torbern,' Elis cried, in a terrible voice, which made the
rocks re-echo. 'Torbern, I am here; you were not wrong I was a wretched
fool to fix my hopes on any earthly love, up on the surface here. My
treasure, and my life, my all-in-all, are down below. Torbern! take me
down with you! Show me the richest veins, the lodes of ore, the glowing
metal! I will dig and bore, and toil and labour. Never, never more will
I come back to see the light of day. Torbern! Torbern! take me down to
you!'

"He took his flint and steel from his pocket, lighted his candle, and
went quickly down the shaft, into the deep cutting where he had been on
the previous day, without seeing anything of the old man. But what was
his amazement when, at the deepest point, he saw the vein of metal with
the utmost clearness and distinctness, so that he could trace every one
of its ramifications, and its risings a