e stave was at an end. The hot and flushed dancers straggled over the
floor by twos and threes, and the big beer-horns were passed from hand
to hand. Truls sat in his corner hugging his violin tightly to
his bosom, only to do something, for he was vaguely afraid of
himself--afraid of the thoughts that might rise--afraid of the deed they
might prompt. He ran his fingers over his forehead, but he hardly
felt the touch of his own hand. It was as if something was dead within
him--as if a string had snapped in his breast, and left it benumbed and
voiceless.

Presently he looked up and saw Borghild standing before him; she held
her arms akimbo, her eyes shone with a strange light, and her features
wore an air of recklessness mingled with pity.

"Ah, Borghild, is it you?" said he, in a hoarse voice. "What do you want
with me? I thought you had done with me now."

"You are a very unwitty fellow," answered she, with a forced laugh. "The
branch that does not bend must break."

She turned quickly on her heel and was lost in the crowd. He sat long
pondering on her words, but their meaning remained hidden to him. The
branch that does not bend must break. Was he the branch, and must he
bend or break? By-and-by he put his hands on his knees, rose with a
slow, uncertain motion, and stalked heavily toward the door. The fresh
night air would do him good. The thought breathes more briskly in God's
free nature, under the broad canopy of heaven. The white mist rose from
the fields, and made the valley below appear like a white sea whose
nearness you feel, even though you do not see it. And out of the mist
the dark pines stretched their warning hands against the sky, and the
moon was swimming, large and placid, between silvery islands of cloud.
Truls began to beat his arms against his sides, and felt the warm blood
spreading from his heart and thawing the numbness of his limbs. Not
caring whither he went, he struck the path leading upward to the
mountains. He took to humming an old air which happened to come into his
head, only to try if there was life enough left in him to sing. It was
the ballad of Young Kirsten and the Merman:

"The billows fall and the billows swell,
In the night so lone,
In the billows blue doth the merman dwell,
And strangely that harp was sounding."

He walked on briskly for a while, and, looking back upon the pain he had
endured but a moment ago, he found it quite foolish and irrational. An
absurd