way down the rocky path that
skirted the foaming Horlingdal river, Hilda assumed a more serious tone,
and sought to convince her companion of the impropriety of being too
fond of fighting, in which attempt, as might be supposed, she was not
very successful.

"Why, Hilda," said the youth, at the close of a speech in which his fair
companion endeavoured to point out the extreme sinfulness of viking
cruises in particular, "it is, as thou sayest, unjust to take from
another that which belongs to him if he be our friend; but if he is our
enemy, and the enemy of our country, that alters the case. Did not the
great Odin himself go on viking cruise and seize what prey he chose?"

Erling said this with the air of a man who deemed his remark
unanswerable.

"I know not," rejoined Hilda. "There seems to me much mystery in our
thoughts about the gods. I have heard it said that there is no such god
as Odin."

The maiden uttered this in a subdued voice, and her cheek paled a little
as she glanced up at Erling's countenance. The youth gazed at her with
an expression of extreme surprise, and for a few minutes they walked
slowly forward without speaking.

There was reason for this silence on both sides. Hilda was naturally of
a simple and trustful nature. She had been brought up in the religion
of her fathers, and had listened with awe and with deep interest on many
a long winter night to the wild legends with which the scalds, or poets
of the period, were wont to beguile the evening hours in her father's
mansion; but about a year before the time of which we write, an aged
stranger had come from the south, and taken up his abode in the valley,
in a secluded and dilapidated hut, in which he was suffered to dwell
unmolested by its owner, Haldor the Fierce; whose fierceness, by the
way, was never exhibited except in time of war and in the heat of
battle!

With this hermit Hilda had held frequent converse, and had listened with
horror, but with a species of fascination which she could not resist, to
his calm and unanswerable reasoning on the fallacy of the religion of
Odin, and on the truth of that of Jesus Christ. At first she resolved
to fly from the old man, as a dangerous enemy, who sought to seduce her
from the paths of rectitude; but when she looked at his grave, sad face,
and listened to the gentle and--she knew not why--persuasive tones of
his voice, she changed her mind, and resolved to hear what he had to
say. Witho