Erica to herself. "He speaks for his tribe, as well as
himself."

"We no fear bishop," said the stranger, still laughing. "You no
fear--?" and he pointed to the long stretch of path--the prodigious
ascent before them.

Erica said there was nothing to fear on the mountain for those who did
their duty to the powers, as it was her intention to do. Her first
Gammel cheese was to be for him whose due it was; and it should be the
best she could make.

This speech she thought would suit, whatever might be the nature of her
companion. If it was the demon, she could do no more to please him than
promise him his cheese.

Her companion seemed not to understand or attend to what she said. He
again asked if she was not afraid to travel alone in so dreary a place,
adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like
him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he
acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and
trying her courage at the same time.

When Erica saw that she had no demon for a companion, but only a
foreigner, she was so much relieved as not to be afraid at all. She
said that nobody thought of being frightened in summer time in her
country. Winter was the time for that. When the days were long, so
that travellers knew their way, and when everybody was abroad, so that
you could not go far without meeting a friend, there was nothing to
fear.

"You go abroad to meet friends, and leave your enemy behind."

At the moment, he turned to look back. Erica could not now help
watching him, and she cast a glance homewards too. They were so high up
the mountain that the fiord and its shores were in full view; and
more;--for the river was seen in its windings from the very skirts of
the mountain to the fiord, and the town of Saltdalen standing on its
banks. In short, the whole landscape to the west lay before them, from
Sulitelma to the point of the horizon where the islands and rocks melted
into the sea.

The stranger had picked up an eagle's feather in his walk; and he now
pointed with it to the tiny cove in which Erlingsen's farm might be
seen, looking no bigger than an infant's toy, and said, "Do you leave an
enemy there, or is Hund now your friend?"

"Hund is nobody's friend, unless he happens to be yours," Erica replied,
perceiving at once that her companion belonged to the pirates. "Hund is
everybody's enemy; and, above all, he is an enemy t