is to two worn-out old creatures like us."

Erica did not need convincing about these things, but she liked to hear
them.

"Where is he now?" asked Ulla. "I always ask where everybody is, at
this season; people go about staring at the snow, as if they had no eyes
to lose. That is the way my husband did. Do make Rolf take care of his
precious eyes, Erica. Is he abroad to-day, my dear?"

"By this time he is," replied Erica, "I left him at work at the
pulpit--"

"Ay! trying his eyes with fine carving, as Peder did!"

"But," continued Erica, "there was news this morning of a lodgment of
logs at the top of the foss [Note 2]; and they were all going, except
Peder, to slide them down the gully to the fiord. The gully is frozen
so slippery, that the work will not take long. They will make a raft of
the logs in the fiord, and either Rolf or Hund will carry them out to
the islands when the tide ebbs."

"Will it be Rolf, do you think, or Hund, dear?"

"I wish it may be Hund. If it be Rolf, I shall go with him. O, Ulla!
I cannot lose sight of him, after what happened last night. Did you
hear? I do wish Oddo would grow wiser."

Ulla shook her head, and then nodded, to intimate that they would not
talk of Nipen; and she began to speak of something else.

"How did Hund conduct himself yesterday? I heard my husband's account:
but you know Peder could say nothing of his looks. Did you mark his
countenance, dear?"

"Indeed, there was no helping it, any more than one can help watching a
storm-cloud as it comes up."

"So it was dark and wrathful, was it,--that ugly face of his? Well it
might be, dear; well it might be!"

"The worst was,--worse than all his dark looks together,--O, Ulla! the
worst was his leap and cry of joy when he heard what Oddo had done, and
that Nipen was made our enemy. He looked like an evil spirit when he
fixed his eyes on me, and snapped his fingers."

Ulla shook her head mournfully, and then asked Erica to put another peat
on the fire.

"I really should like to know," said Erica, in a low voice, when she
resumed her seat on the bed, "I am sure you can tell me if you would,
what is the real truth about Hund, what it is that weighs upon his
heart."

"I will tell you," replied Ulla. "You are not one that will go babbling
it, so that Hund shall meet with taunts, and have his sore heart made
sorer. I will tell you, my dear, though there is no one else but our
mistress that I would t