be found."

He understood her not, but fearing to ask, he remained silent.

His words and his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the
forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which
strove to take possession of her heart and to wrest her away from him
forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of
her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness was
staked on him.

One evening Vigfusson and old Lage Ulfson had been walking about the
fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as
they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two
adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old
ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to
listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the
rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's
countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then
again paused, and said, imploringly, "Try to get her home if you can,
friend Vigfusson."

Vigfusson nodded, and Lage went; the song had ceased for a moment, now
it began again:

"Ye twittering birdlings, in forest and glen
I have heard you so gladly before;
But a bold knight hath come to woo me,
I dare listen to you no more.
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.

"And the knight who hath come a-wooing to me,
He calls me his love and his own;
Why then should I stray through the darksome woods,
Or dream in the glades alone?
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest."

Her voice fell to a low unintelligible murmur; then it rose, and the
last verses came, clear, soft, and low, drifting on the evening breeze:

"Yon beckoning world, that shimmering lay
O'er the woods where the old pines grow,
That gleamed through the moods of the summer day
When the breezes were murmuring low
(And it is so dark, so dark in the forest);

"Oh let me no more in the sunshine hear
Its quivering noonday call;
The bold knight's love is the sun of my heart--
Is my life, and my all in all.
But it is so dark, so dark in the forest."

The young man felt the blood rushing to his face--his heart beat
violently. There was a keen sense of guilt in the blush on his cheek, a
loud accusation in the throbbing pulse and the swelling heart-beat. Had
he not stood there behind the maiden's bac