and meadows and tree-lined roads slide past. Where was
he going? He did not know himself. Why should not a man start off at
haphazard, and get out when the mood takes him? At last he was able to
travel through his own country without having to think of half-pennies.
He could let the days pass over his head without care or trouble, and
give himself good leisure to enjoy any beauty that came in his way.

There is Mjosen, the broad lake with the rich farmlands and long wooded
ridges on either side. He had never been here before, yet it seemed as
if something in him nodded a recognition to it all. Once more he sat
drinking in the rich, fruitful landscape--the wooded hills, the fields
and meadows seemed to spread themselves out over empty places in his
mind.

But later in the day the landscape narrowed and they were in
Gudbrandsdalen, where the sunburned farms are set on green slopes
between the river and the mountains. Peer's head was full of pictures
from abroad, from the desert sands with their scorched palm-trees to the
canals of Venice. But here--he nodded again. Here he was at home, though
he had never seen the place before; just this it was which had been
calling to him all through his long years of exile.

At last on a sudden he gathered up his traps and got out, without the
least idea even of the name of the station. A meal at the hotel, a
knapsack on his back, and hey!--there before him lies the road, up into
the hills.

Alone? What matter, when there are endless things that greet him
from every side with "Welcome home!" The road is steep, the air grows
lighter, the homesteads smaller. At last the huts look like little
matchboxes--from the valley, no doubt, it must seem as if the people up
here were living among the clouds. But many and many a youth must have
followed this road in the evenings, going up to court his Mari or his
Kari at the saeter-hut, the same road and the same errand one generation
after another. To Peer it seemed as if all those lads now bore him
company--aye, as if he discovered in himself something of wanton youth
that had managed to get free at last.

Puh! His coat must come off and his cap go into the knapsack. Now,
as the valley sinks and sinks farther beneath him, the view across it
widens farther and farther out over the uplands beyond. Brown hills and
blue, ridges livid or mossy-grey in the setting sun, rising and falling
wave behind wave, and beyond all a great snowfield, like a sea