borne in my mind, and therefore I am accustomed to
them."

"Ah!" said Susanna, "those who love and are loved, the happy, should
never die! But why this strange foreboding?"

"I do not know myself!" replied Alette, "but it has accompanied me from
my earliest youth. My mother was born under the beautiful heaven of
Provence, and passed the greater part of her youth in that warm country.
The love of my father made her love in our Norway a second country, and
here she spent the remainder of her life; she never, however, could
rightly bear this cold climate, longed secretly for that warmer land,
and died with the longing. To me has she bequeathed this feeling; and
although I have never seen those orange groves, that warm blue heaven,
of which she so gladly spoke, I drew in from childhood a love to them; I
have, besides, inherited my mother's suffering from cold;--my chest is
not strong, ah!--the long, dark winters of Nordland; the residence on
the sea-shore in a climate which is twice as cold as that to which I
have been accustomed, the sea-mists and storms--ah! I cannot long
withstand them. But Susanna, you must promise me not to say one word of
what I have confided to you, either to Harald or to Lexow!"

"But if they know it," said Susanna, "then you certainly need not go
there. Certainly your bridegroom would for your sake seek out a milder
country----"

"And not feel at home there, and die of longing for his dear Nordland!
No, no, Susanna! I know his love for his native land, and know that this
winterly nature which I dread so much, is precisely his life and his
health. Alf is a Nordlander in heart and soul, and has, as it were,
grown up with the district which his fathers inhabited, and whose
advance and prosperity is his favourite scheme, the principal object of
his activity. No, no! for my sake he shall not tear himself from his
home, his noble efforts. Rather would I, if it must be so, find an early
grave in his Nordland!"

Susanna now desired to know, and Alette communicated to her, various
particulars of the country which was she thought so terrible, and we
will now, with the young friends, cast--

A GLANCE INTO NORDLAND.

All is cold and hard.

BLOM.

The spirit of God yet rests upon Nordland.

Z.

A great part of Norway has, as it were, its face turned away from life.
"The Old Night," which the ancient world considered to be the original
mother of all things, here held the giant chi