Maurice
once more in the valley. He had played a hazardous game, but so far
fortune had favored him. In that supreme self-trust which a great and
generous passion inspires, he had determined to force Tharald Ormgrass
to save himself and his children from the imminent destruction. The
court had recognized his right to the farm upon the payment of five
hundred dollars to its present nominal owner. The money had already
been paid, and the farm lay now desolate and forlorn, shivering in the
cold gusts from the glacier. The family had just boarded a large
English brig which lay at anchor out in the fjord, and was about to
set sail for the new world beyond the sea. In the prow of the vessel
stood Tharald, gazing with sullen defiance toward the unknown west,
while Elsie, her eyes red with weeping, and her piquant little face
somewhat pinched with cold, was clinging close to him, and now and
then glancing back toward the dear, deserted homestead.

It had been a sad winter for poor little Elsie. As the lawsuit had
progressed, she had had to hear many a harsh word against her lover,
which seemed all the harder because she did not know how to defend
him. His doings, she admitted, did seem incomprehensible, and her
father certainly had some show of justice on his side when he
upbraided him as cruel, cold, and ungrateful; but, with the sweet,
obstinate loyalty of a Norse maiden, she still persisted in believing
him good and upright and generous. Some day it would all be cleared
up, she thought, and then her triumph and her happiness would be the
greater. A man who knew so many strange things, she argued in her
simplicity (for her pride in his accomplishments was in direct
proportion to her own inability to comprehend them), could not
possibly be mean and selfish as other men.

The day had, somehow, a discontented, dubious look. Now its sombre
veil was partially lifted, and something like the shadow of a smile
cheered you by its promise, if not by its presence; then a great rush
of light from some unexpected quarter of the heavens, and then again
a sudden closing of all the sunny paths--a dismal, gray monotony
everywhere. Now and then tremendous groans and long-drawn thunderous
rumblings were heard issuing from the glaciers, and the ice-choked
river, whose voice seldom rose above an even baritone, now boomed and
brawled with the most capricious interludes of crashing, grinding, and
rushing sounds.

On the pier down at the fjord s