any more,
but now and again the screech of a cock-ptarmigan could be heard among
the withies.

"What made you come just here for your holiday, I wonder," she asked
suddenly.

"I leave everything to chance, Froken Uthoug. It just happened so. It's
all so homelike here, wherever one goes. And it is so wonderful to be
home in Norway again."

"But haven't you been to see your people--your father and mother--since
you came home?"

"I--! Do you suppose I have a father and mother?"

"But near relations--surely you must have a brother or sister somewhere
in the world?"

"Ah, if one only had! Though, after all, one can get on without."

She looked at him searchingly, as if trying to see whether he spoke in
earnest. Then she said:

"Do you know that mother dreamed of you before you came?"

"Of me?" Peer's eyes opened wide. "What did she dream about me?"

A sudden flush came to the girl's face, and she shook her head. "It's
foolish of me to sit here and tell you all this. But you see that was
why we wanted so much to find out about you when you came. And it gives
me a sort of feeling of our having known each other a long time."

"You appear to have a very constant flow of high spirits, Froken
Uthoug!"

"I? Why do you think--? Oh, well, yes. One can come by most things, you
know, if one has to have them."

"Even high spirits?"

She turned her head and looked towards the shore. "Some day perhaps--if
we should come to be friends--I'll tell you more about it."

Peer bent to his oars and rowed on. The stillness of the night drew them
nearer and nearer together, and made them silent; only now and then they
would look at each other and smile.

"What mysterious creature is this I have come upon?" thought Peer. She
might be about one-or two-and-twenty. She sat there with bowed head, and
in this soft glow the oval face had a strange light of dreams upon it.
But suddenly her glance came back and rested on him again, and then she
smiled, and he saw that her mouth was large and her lips full and red.

"I wish I had been all over the world, like you," she said.

"Have you never been abroad, Froken Uthoug?" he asked.

"I spent a winter in Berlin, once, and a few months in South Germany. I
played the violin a little, you see; and I hoped to take it up seriously
abroad and make something of it--but--"

"Well, why shouldn't you?"

She was silent for a little, then at last she said: "I suppose you are
sure to know about