Hund had built himself two cabins, one behind
the other (these are now, as I think I have explained to you, connected
by a passage); the smaller one was the homestead; in the other he carved
and wrote, so that while the young wife slept the 'maker of runes' and
the saeter woman sat whispering.

"One night, however, the wife learnt all things, but said no word. Then,
as now, the ravine in front of the enclosure was crossed by a slight
bridge of planks, and over this bridge the woman of the saeter passed and
repassed each night. On a day when Hund had gone down to fish in the
fiord, the wife took an axe, and hacked and hewed at the bridge, yet it
still looked firm and solid; and that night, as Hund sat waiting in his
workshop, there struck upon his ears a piercing cry, and a crashing of
logs and rolling rock, and then again the dull roaring of the torrent far
below.

"But the woman did not die unavenged; for that winter a man, skating far
down the fiord, noticed a curious object embedded in the ice; and when,
stooping, he looked closer, he saw two corpses, one gripping the other by
the throat, and the bodies were the bodies of Hund and his young wife.

"Since then, they say, the woman of the saeter haunts Hund's house, and
if she sees a light within she taps upon the door, and no man may keep
her out. Many, at different times, have tried to occupy the house, but
strange tales are told of them. 'Men do not live at Hund's saeter,' said
my old grey-haired friend, concluding his tale,--'they die there.'

"I have persuaded some of the braver of the villagers to bring what
provisions and other necessaries we require up to a plateau about a mile
from the house and leave them there. That is the most I have been able
to do. It comes somewhat as a shock to one to find men and women--fairly
educated and intelligent as many of them are--slaves to fears that one
would expect a child to laugh at. But there is no reasoning with
superstition."

_Extract from the same letter_, _but from a part seemingly written a day
or two later_:

"At home I should have forgotten such a tale an hour after I had heard
it, but these mountain fastnesses seem strangely fit to be the last
stronghold of the supernatural. The woman haunts me already. At
night instead of working, I find myself listening for her tapping at
the door; and yesterday an incident occurred that makes me fear for my
own common sense. I had gone out f