s from the house-roofs,
damages piers and moorings, and chases police and watchmen into their
holes. It is Nature's loud war-cry, in the very midst of the civilised
town, to all the recollections of his childhood, to his imagination and
his love of Nature; and he obeys it like an old trumpeter's horse that
hears the signal of his youth, and instantly leaps the fence.

After an hour or two out in the storm, the fire in his veins is subdued,
and home he comes once more a quiet, grave man, carefully puts his stick
and goloshes in their accustomed places in the hall, and is pitied by
his wife, who has been anxious about him, and is now helping him off
with his wet things. Strange to say, he himself, in spite of adverse
circumstances, is in capital spirits that evening, and has such a number
of things to tell about this storm--every thing of course, as becomes
the occasion, in the form of anxiety lest damage should be done, or fire
break out in the town.

It was in such weather that I--a practising doctor, and having, as such,
good reason, both on my own account and on that of others, for being out
at all times of the day or night--one rainy, misty, stormy October
afternoon, roamed the streets of Kristiania, finding pleasure in letting
the rain dash in my face, while my mackintosh protected the rest of my
person.

Darkness had gradually fallen, and the lighted gas-lamps flared in the
gusty wind, making me think of the revolving lights on a foggy night
out on the coast. Now and again an unfastened door swung open and shut
again, with a bang like a minute gun. My inward comment on these
occasions was that, even in our nervous times, there must still be an
astonishing number of people without nerves; for such bangs thunder
through the whole house right up to the garret, as a gust fills the
passage, and doors fly open and shut, shut and open; everybody feels the
discomfort, but no one will take the trouble to go down and fasten the
origin of the evil; the porter is out in the town, and as long as he is
away the inmates must put up with an absence of all domestic comfort.

It was just such an unfastened, unweariedly banging door that led to
what I have to relate.

As I passed it, I heard a voice, which seemed familiar to me, an old
beloved voice--though at first I could not recall where I had heard
it--calling impatiently to the porter. It was on the subject of the
banging door. The man was evidently the only nervous individ