ail. Joyless and songless, the whole landscape lay as
though frozen into sculptured stone. The Sun slept,--and the Fjord,
black with brooding shadows, seemed silently to ask--where? Where was
the great king of Light?--the glorious god of the golden hair and ruddy
countenance?--the glittering warrior with the flaming shield and spear
invincible? Where had he found his rest? By what strange enchantment had
he fallen into so deep and long a drowsiness. The wind that had rioted
across the mountains, rooting up great trees in its shrieking career
northwards, grew hushed as it approached the Altenfjord--there a weird
stillness reigned, broken only by the sullen and monotonous plash of the
invisible waves upon the scarcely visible shore.

A few tiny, twinkling lights showed the irregular outline of Bosekop,
and now and then one or two fishing-boats with sable sails and small
colored lamps at mast and prow would flit across the inky water like
dark messengers from another world bound on some mournful errand. Human
figures, more shadowy than real, were to be seen occasionally moving on
the pier, and to the left of the little town, as the eye grew accustomed
to the moveless gloom, a group of persons, like ghosts in a dream, could
be dimly perceived, working busily at the mending of nets.

Suddenly a strange, unearthly glow flashed over the sombre scene,--a
rosy radiance deepening to brilliant streaks of fire. The dark heavens
were torn asunder, and through them streamed flaring pennons of
light,--waving, trembling, dancing, luminous ribbons of red, blue,
green, and a delicious amber, like the flowing of golden wine,--wider,
higher, more dazzlingly lustrous, the wondrous glory shone aloft, rising
upward from the horizon--thrusting long spears of lambent flame among
the murky retreating clouds, till in one magnificent coruscation of
resplendent beams a blazing arch of gold leaped from east to west,
spanning the visible breath of the Fjord, and casting towards the white
peaks above, vivid sparkles and reflections of jewel-like brightness and
color. Here was surely the Rainbow Bridge of Odin--the glittering
pathway leading to Valhalla! Long filmy threads of emerald and azure
trailed downwards from it, like ropes of fairy flowers, binding it to
the earth--above it hung a fleece-like nebulous whiteness,--a canopy
through which palpitated sudden flashes of amethyst. Then, as though the
arch were a bent bow for the hand of some heavenly