not heard him, but as he repeated his introduction a light came into her
eyes, and coming up to me she held out her hand, saying, "Welcome."

Then turning to her father--"Have you a letter for me, father?" she
asked.

"No, Elsket," he said, gently; "but I will go again next month."

A cloud settled on her face and increased its sadness, and she turned
her head away. After a moment she went into the house and I saw that she
was weeping. A look of deep dejection came over the old man's face also.

II.

I found that my friend, "Doctor John," strange to relate of a fisherman,
had not exaggerated the merits of the fishing. How they got there, two
thousand feet above the lower valley, I don't know; but trout fairly
swarmed in the little streams, which boiled among the rocks, and they
were as greedy as if they had never seen a fly in their lives. I shortly
became contemptuous toward anything under three pounds, and addressed
myself to the task of defending my flies against the smaller ones, and
keeping them only for the big fellows, which ran over three pounds--the
patriarchs of the streams. With these I had capital sport, for they knew
every angle and hole, they sought every coign of vantage, and the rocks
were so thick and so sharp that from the time one of these veterans took
the fly, it was an equal contest which of us should come off victorious.
I was often forced to rush splashing and floundering through the water
to my waist to keep my line from being sawed, and as the water was
not an hour from the green glaciers above, it was not always entirely
pleasant.

I soon made firm friends with my hosts, and varied the monotony of
catching three-pounders by helping them get in their hay for the
winter. Elsket, poor thing, was, notwithstanding her apparently splendid
physique, so delicate that she could no longer stand the fatigue of
manual labor, any extra exertion being liable to bring on a recurrence
of the heart-failure, from which she had suffered. I learned that she
had had a violent hemorrhage two summers before, from which she had come
near dying, and that the skill of my friend, the doctor, had doubtless
saved her life. This was the hold he had on Olaf of the Mountain: this
was the "small service" he had rendered them.

By aiding them thus, I was enabled to be of material assistance to Olaf,
and I found in helping these good people, that work took on once more
the delight which I remembered it used to ha