on; and
he would laugh and play with it, and in his child's way even wonder at
the contrast between her stern face and her youthful maidenly tresses.

This Thomas, her son, was a strange child. He had a Norseman's taste for
the fabulous and fantastic, and although he never heard a tale of Necken
or the Hulder, he would often startle his mother by the most fanciful
combinations of imagined events, and by bolder personifications than
ever sprung from the legendary soil of the Norseland. She always took
care to check him whenever he indulged in these imaginary flights, and
he at last came to look upon them as something wrong and sinful. The
boy, as he grew up, often strikingly reminded her of her father,
as, indeed, he seemed to have inherited more from her own than from
Halvard's race. Only the bright flaxen hair and his square, somewhat
clumsy stature might have told him to be the latter's child. He had a
hot temper, and often distressed his mother by his stubbornness; and
then there would come a great burst of repentance afterwards, which
distressed her still more. For she was afraid it might be a sign of
weakness. "And strong he must be," said she to herself, "strong enough
to overcome all resistance, and to conquer a great name for himself,
strong enough to bless a mother who brought him into the world
nameless."

Strange to say, much as she loved this child, she seldom caressed him.
It was a penance she had imposed upon herself to atone for her guilt.
Only at times, when she had been sitting up late, and her eyes would
fall, as it were, by accident upon the little face on the pillow,
with the sweet unconsciousness of sleep resting upon it like a soft,
invisible veil, would she suddenly throw herself down over him, kiss
him, and whisper tender names in his ear, while her tears fell hot and
fast on his yellow hair and his rosy countenance. Then the child would
dream that he was sailing aloft over shining forests, and that his
mother, beaming with all the beauty of her lost youth, flew before him,
showering golden flowers on his path. These were the happiest moments of
Brita's joyless life, and even these were not unmixed with bitterness;
for into the midst of her joy would steal a shy anxious thought which
was the more terrible because it came so stealthily, so soft-footed
and unbidden. Had not this child been given her as a punishment for her
guilt? Had she then a right to turn God's scourge into a blessing? Did
she