The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elsket, by Thomas Nelson Page

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Title: Elsket
1891

Author: Thomas Nelson Page

Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23017]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELSKET ***

Produced by David Widger

ELSKET

By Thomas Nelson Page

1891

I.

"The knife hangs loose in the sheath."
--Old Norsk Proverb.

I spent a month of the summer of 188- in Norway--"Old Norway"--and a
friend of mine, Dr. John Robson, who is as great a fisherman as he is a
physician, and knows that I love a stream where the trout and I can meet
each other alone, and have it out face to face, uninterrupted by any
interlopers, did me a favor to which I was indebted for the experience
related below. He had been to Norway two years before, and he let me
into the secret of an unexplored region between the Nord Fiord and the
Romsdal. I cannot give the name of the place, because even now it has
not been fully explored, and he bound me by a solemn promise that I
would not divulge it to a single soul, actually going to the length of
insisting on my adding a formal oath to my affirmation. This I consented
to because I knew that my friend was a humorous man, and also because
otherwise he positively refused to inform me where the streams were
about which he had been telling such fabulous fish stories. "No," he
said, "some of those ------ cattle who think they own the earth and have
a right to fool women at will and know how to fish, will be poking in
there, worrying Olaf and Elsket, and ruining the fishing, and I'll be
------ if I tell you unless you make oath." My friend is a swearing
man, though he says he swears for emphasis, not blasphemy, and on this
occasion he swore with extreme solemnity. I saw that he was in earnest,
so made affidavit and was rewarded.

"Now," he said, after inquiring about my climbing capacity in a way
which piqued me, and giving me the routes with a particularity which
somewhat mystified me, "Now I will write a letter to Olaf of the
Mountain and to Elsket. I once was enabled to do them a slight service,
and they will receive you. It will take h