rding to the novelist, done before me in similar circumstances,
crept for shelter into the larger bed of the cell, which, though rather
scant, taken fairly lengthwise, for a man of five feet eleven, I found,
by stretching myself diagonally from corner to corner, no very
uncomfortable lounging-place in a thunder-shower. Some provident
herd-boy had spread it over, apparently months before, with a littering
of heath and fern, which now formed a dry, springy conch; and as I lay
wrapped up in my plaid, listening to the rain-drops as they pattered
thick and heavy atop, or slanted through the broken hatchway to the
vacant bed on the opposite side of the excavation, I called up the wild
narrative of Norna, and felt all its poetry. The opening passage of the
story is, however, not poetry, but good prose, in which the curious
visitor might give expression to his own conjectures, if ingenious
enough either to form or to express them so well. "With my eyes fixed on
the smaller bed," the sorceress is made to say, "I wearied myself with
conjectures regarding the origin and purpose of my singular place of
refuge. Had it been really the work of that powerful Trolld to whom the
poetry of the Scalds referred it? or was it the tomb of some
Scandinavian chief, interred with his arms and his wealth, perhaps also
with his immolated wife, that what he loved best in life might not in
death be divided from him? or was it the abode of penance chosen by some
devoted anchorite of later days? or the idle work of some wandering
mechanic, whom chance, and whim, and leisure, had thrust upon such an
undertaking?" What follows this sober passage is the work of the poet.
"Sleep," continues Norna, "had gradually crept upon me among my
lucubrations, when I was startled from my slumbers by a second clap of
thunder, and when I awoke, I saw through the dim light which the upper
aperture admitted, the unshapely and indistinct form of Trolld the
dwarf, seated opposite to me on the lesser couch, which his square and
misshapen bulk seemed absolutely to fill up. I was startled, but not
affrighted; for the blood of the ancient race of Lochlin was warm in my
veins. He spoke, and his words were of Norse,--so old, that few save my
father, or I myself could have comprehended their import,--such language
as was spoken in these islands ere Olave planted his cross on the ruins
of heathenism. His meaning was dark also, and obscure, like that which
the pagan priests were wont