imony of those who knew her--the most
peculiar creature that ever was born. But perhaps no one did know her;
if her father was right, no one really did--at least no one but himself.

Aasa was all to her father; she was his past and she was his future, his
hope and his life; and withal it must be admitted that those who judged
her without knowing her had at least in one respect as just an opinion
of her as he; for there was no denying that she was strange, very
strange. She spoke when she ought to be silent, and was silent when it
was proper to speak; wept when she ought to laugh, and laughed when it
was proper to weep; but her laughter as well as her tears, her speech
like her silence, seemed to have their source from within her own soul,
to be occasioned, as it were, by something which no one else could see
or hear. It made little difference where she was; if the tears came, she
yielded to them as if they were something she had long desired in vain.
Few could weep like her, and "weep like Aasa Kvaerk," was soon also
added to the stock of parish proverbs. And then her laugh! Tears may
be inopportune enough, when they come out of time, but laughter is far
worse; and when poor Aasa once burst out into a ringing laughter in
church, and that while the minister was pronouncing the benediction, it
was only with the greatest difficulty that her father could prevent
the indignant congregation from seizing her and carrying her before the
sheriff for violation of the church-peace. Had she been poor and homely,
then of course nothing could have saved her; but she happened to be both
rich and beautiful, and to wealth and beauty much is pardoned. Aasa's
beauty, however, was also of a very unusual kind; not the tame sweetness
so common in her sex, but something of the beauty of the falcon, when it
swoops down upon the unwatchful sparrow or soars round the lonely
crags; something of the mystic depth of the dark tarn, when with bodeful
trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from
its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was
not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August,
her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a
chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the
North, and the longer you looked at them the deeper they grew, just like
the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as
deep as t