together with ropes
and planks, and drawn away by twelve strong horses. Long after the
strange caravan had vanished in the twilight, the children stood gazing
up into the empty bell-tower.

It was near midnight, when Lage stood at the steep, rocky wall in the
forest; the men were laboring to hoist the church-bell up to a staunch
cross-beam between two mighty fir-trees, and in the weird light of their
torches, the wild surroundings looked wilder and more fantastic. Anon,
the muffled noise and bustle of the work being at an end, the laborers
withdrew, and a strange, feverish silence seemed to brood over the
forest. Lage took a step forward, and seized the bell-rope; the clear,
conquering toll of the metal rung solemnly through the silence, and from
the rocks, the earth, and the tree-tops, rose a fierce chorus of howls,
groans, and screams. All night the ringing continued; the old trees
swayed to and fro, creaked, and groaned, the roots loosened their holds
in the fissures of the rock, and the bushy crowns bowed low under their
unwonted burden.

It was well-nigh morn, but the dense fog still brooded over the woods,
and it was dark as night. Lage was sitting on the ground, his head
leaning on both his elbows; at his side lay the flickering torch, and
the huge bell hung dumb overhead. In the dark he felt a hand touch
his shoulder; had it happened only a few hours before, he would have
shuddered; now the physical sensation hardly communicated itself to his
mind, or, if it did, had no power to rouse him from his dead, hopeless
apathy. Suddenly--could he trust his own ears?--the church-bell gave a
slow, solemn, quivering stroke, and the fogs rolled in thick masses to
the east and to the west, as if blown by the breath of the sound. Lage
seized his torch, sprang to his feet, and saw--Vigfusson. He stretched
his arm with the blazing torch closer to the young man's face, stared
at him with large eyes, and his lip quivered; but he could not utter a
word.

"Vigfusson?" faltered he at last.

"It is I;" and the second stroke followed, stronger and more solemn than
the first. The same fierce, angry voices chorused forth from every
nook of the rock and the woods. Then came the third--the noise grew;
fourth--and it sounded like a hoarse, angry hiss; when the twelfth
stroke fell, silence reigned again in the forest. Vigfusson dropped the
bell-rope, and with a loud voice called Lage Kvaerk and his men. He
lit a torch, held it aloft ov