f the secret, yield to the solicitations of Mr. Bergman, and
make over to him a child whose daily aspect was a torment to him. But we
return now to the present.

Harald, under skilful medical care in Bergen, after the mountain
journey, was quickly restored to health. When he had attended the
marriage of Alette, he had travelled abroad, but would, in the course of
the summer, return to Semb, where he would settle down, in order to live
for the beloved relative whom he had again discovered.

The guide, the honest old peasant of Hailing, had met with his death on
the mountains. His grandson wept by his corpse till he was himself half
dead with hunger and cold, when the people from the dales, sent by Mrs.
Astrid and Harald, succeeded in making a way through the snow-drifts to
the Bjoeroeja-saeter, and in rescuing him.

Susanna dropt a tear for the old man's fate, but felt within her a
secret regret not to have died like him. She looked towards the future
with disquiet. But when she could again leave her bed, when Mrs. Astrid
drove her out with her, when she felt the vernal air, and saw the sea,
and the clear heaven above the mountains, and the green orchards at
their feet; then awoke she again vividly to the feeling of the beauty of
the earth, and of life. And she contemplated with admiration and delight
the new objects which surrounded her, as well the magnificent forms of
nature, as the life and the changing scenes in the city; for Susanna
found herself in the lovely and splendidly situated Bergen, the greatest
mercantile city of Norway, the birthplace of Hollberg, Dahl, and Ole
Bull.

Yet would she speedily separate herself from all this, and what was
still harder, from her adored mistress; for Susanna had firmly
determined never again to see Harald. Crimson blushes covered her cheeks
when she recollected her confession in the mountains, at the moment when
she thought herself at the point of death, and she felt that after this
they could not meet, much less live in the same house without mutually
painful embarrassment. She would, therefore, not return again to Semb;
but, so soon as her health would permit it, would go from Bergen by sea
to Sweden, to her native town again, and there, in the bosom of her
little darling, seek to heal her own heart, and draw new strength to
live and labour.

But it was not easy for poor Susanna to announce this resolve to her
mistress. She trembled violently, and could not restrain her