her own, she yielded in this too. But very soon they
came to where they could see Tingvold in the valley below them. She
looked down at it, and then at him, as if it could speak for itself.

The big sunny fields on the hill slope, with the wood encircling and
sheltering them, the house and farm buildings a little in the shadow,
but big and fine--it all looked so beautiful. The valley, with its
rushing, winding river, stretched away down beyond, with farm after
farm in the bottom and on its slopes on both sides--but none, not
one to equal Tingvold--none so fertile or so pleasant to the eye, none
so snugly sheltered, and yet commanding the whole valley. When she saw
that Hans was struck by the sight, she reddened with joy.

"Yes," he said, in answer to her unspoken question--"yes, it is true;
Tingvold is a fine place; it would be hard to find its equal."

He smiled and bent down to her. "But I care more for you, Mildrid,
than for Tingvold; and perhaps--you care more for me than for
Tingvold?"

When he took it this way she could say no more. He looked so happy
too; he sat down, and she beside him.

"Now I'm going to sing something for you," he whispered.

She felt glad. "I've never heard you sing," she said.

"No, I know you have not; and though people talk about my singing, you
must not think it's anything very great. There's only this about it,
that it comes upon me sometimes, and then I _must_ sing."

He sat thinking for a good while, and then he sang her the song that
he had made for their own wedding to the tune of her race's Bridal
March. Quite softly he sang it, but with such exultation as she had
never heard in any voice before. She looked down on her home, the
house she was to drive away from on that day; followed the road with
her eyes down to the bridge across the river, and along on the other
side right up to the church, which lay on a height, among birch-trees,
with a group of houses near it. It was not a very clear day, but the
subdued light over the landscape was in sympathy with the subdued
picture in her mind. How many hundred times had she not driven that
road in fancy, only she never knew with whom! The words and the tune
entranced her; the peculiar warm, soft voice seemed to touch the very
depths of her being; her eyes were full, but she was not crying; nor
was she laughing. She was sitting with her hand on his, now looking at
him, now over the valley, when she saw smoke beginning to rise from