f the juniper leaf
interrupted our attention to it.

"Is not this delicious?" observed R---- to me; and the gray-blue
tobacco-smoke spouted, like a small fountain, from his mouth. "In London
I should be just thinking of getting out of bed, and here I have been up
these nine hours, and eaten like a bricklayer."

"I should not mind living here, and like this, all my life," I answered,
"and paddling about on that river."

"Ja," interposed the Norwegian in a broken dialect, but he thought
himself a good English scholar; "dat is goot, but you not tak care you
roltz down de foss; one old vomans roltz down de foss."

"Ah?" said I.

"Ja," replied the Norwegian; "she row one praam cross de top of de foss,
and de praam roltz over, and she vas drowntz."

The same dull, faint, long cry, fell on our ears; but we took no heed of
it, for our native companion said it was the signal shout of huntsmen in
the mountains.

"Did you ever find the old woman's body?" I asked.

"Ja," the Norwegian answered, twisting his quid from the left to the
right cheek, "she vas foundtz; and vat is droltz de bags of flour she
have in de praam, dough dey been long timetz in de vater, vere quite
drytz--de middle quite drytz."

"And what did you do with them?" I asked.

"I eatz dem," said my friend.

Again the long, low cry stole mournfully through the still air, and it
moaned like a melancholy spirit of the night that had been left behind
by its fellow spirits, as they hurried from earth at dawn of day, and
which, concealing itself in some mountain cavern, was wailing their
absence, and telling the torture it suffered from the glaring light.

"I say, old cock, have you any goblins in this place?" asked R----,
walking close up to the Norwegian, and blowing the smoke from his pipe
so voluminously in the little man's face, that he coughed till he nearly
spat his quid out of the window.

"Nej, nej," replied the Norwegian, as soon as he could breathe to speak,
in a tone of surprise that R---- should suppose such a thing. The
Norwegians are superstitious, and believe as confidently in ghosts, as I
do in the heat of fire.

"What the devil then," continued R----, "is that confounded groaning
about? Some fellow has committed murder. You had better go and see."

"Nej, nej," remonstrated the Norwegian, scratching his head, and moving
nervously in his chair at the suggestion. The Norwegian was stable as
his mountains; and R----, laughing at the man's