"Oh! that's it, is it?" replied R----, quietly, regaining his
self-possession.

"Yes, my Lord," rejoined the steward, with firmness, holding a positive
belief in his own, and the cook's efficacious remedy.

"Well," observed R----, with deliberate quaintness, "don't _boil_ it in
our soup afterwards."

"No, my Lord," and the steward took his leave, understanding his
master's disposition, and knowing that his dialogues with him generally
resulted in a compliment to the traditionary cleanliness of persons in
his office.

In the afternoon we went farther up the Fiord, about five miles to the
north-east of the village of Faedde. The Faedde Fiord is of great depth,
and in a circular bay to which we had now sailed, no anchorage for a
vessel of the yacht's tonnage could be found. Running her, therefore,
into a bight, ropes from the bow and stern were made fast to a couple of
firs, and by belaying them taut, the cutter was kept clear from the base
of a mountain that rose, straight as the mast, out of the water to an
altitude of several thousand feet. This was the most beautiful and
romantic spot of which the imagination of a poet might dream. The bay
was about half a league in circumference, and a perfect circle in form.
To the east, south, and west, were mountains covered nearly to their
peaks with thick forests of fir; and when the dispersion of the clouds
revealed their gray summits, many cascades, like thin pillars of light,
darted down the rocks; and the eye, following their track, could trace
their increasing bulk as they rolled along from crag to glen, bounding,
gliding, foaming, till they fell, roaring, with collected volume, into
the waters of the bay. The sound of these cascades during the heat of
the day was not only pleasant to the ear, but still more delightful was
the feeling of freshness it conveyed to the mind.

To the north a piece of level land, made into an island by the severed
branches of a river, bore, by its position, all the beauty and aptitude
for human habitation that nature could bestow; and the clean, white
cottages with their red roofs and spires of ascending smoke, its gardens
with their symmetrical flower-beds, and its cultivated fields, teemed
with every sign of ease and plenty, and revealed the ingenuity of man.
Beyond the northern limit of this island, far away in the interior, the
blue outlines of the mountains were drawn with a darker tint upon the
kindred colour of the sky, and their s