and warm your ears for you. Your healths, children!"

The two went homewards arm-in-arm, dancing down the hillsides, and
singing gaily as they went. But suddenly, when they were still some
way from the town, Merle stopped and pointed. "There," she
whispered--"there's mother!"

A solitary woman was walking slowly in the twilight over a wide field
of stubble, looking around her. It was as if she were lingering here to
search out the meaning of something--of many things. From time to time
she would glance up at the sky, or at the town below, or at people
passing on the road, and then she would nod her head. How infinitely far
off she seemed, how utterly a stranger to all the noisy doings of men!
What was she seeing now? What were her thoughts?

"Let us go on," whispered Merle, drawing him with her. And the young
girl suddenly began to sing, loudly, as if in an overflow of spirits;
and Peer guessed that it was for her mother's sake. Perhaps the lonely
woman stood there now in the twilight smiling after them.

One Sunday morning Merle drove up to the hotel in a light cart with a
big brown horse; Peer came out and climbed in, leaving the reins to her.
They were going out along the fjord to look at her father's big estate
which in olden days had been the County Governors' official residence.

It is the end of September. The sun is still warm, but the waters of the
lake are grey and all the fields are reaped. Here and there a strip of
yellowing potato-stalks lies waiting to be dug up. Up on the hillsides
horses tethered for grazing stand nodding their heads slowly, as if they
knew that it was Sunday. And a faint mist left by the damps of the night
floats about here and there over the broad landscape.

They passed through a wood, and came on the other side to an avenue
of old ash trees, that turned up from the road and ran uphill to a big
house where a flag was flying. The great white dwelling-house stood
high, as if to look out far over the world; the red farm-buildings
enclosed the wide courtyard on three sides, and below were gardens and
broad lands, sloping down towards the lake. Something like an estate!

"What's the name of that place?" cried Peer, gazing at it.

"Loreng."

"And who owns it?"

"Don't know," answered the girl, cracking her whip.

Next moment the horse turned in to the avenue, and Peer caught
involuntarily at the reins. "Hei! Brownie--where are you going?" he
cried.

"Why not go up and have