mory, and stray fragments of old songs and ballads he had
known in his childhood returned to him with haunting persistence. It
was, for him, one of those sudden halts in life which we all
experience,--an instant,--when time and the world seem to stand still,
as though to permit us easy breathing; a brief space,--in which we are
allowed to stop and wonder awhile at the strange unaccountable force
within us, that enables us to stand with such calm, smiling audacity, on
our small pin's point of the present, between the wide dark gaps of past
and future; a small hush,--in which the gigantic engines of the universe
appear to revolve no more, and the immortal Soul of man itself is
subjected and over-ruled by supreme and eternal Thought. Drifting away
on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and
dreamland, the watcher of the midnight sun gave himself up to the half
painful, half delicious sense of being drawn in, absorbed, and lost in
infinite imaginings, when the intense stillness around him was broken by
the sound of a voice singing, a full, rich contralto, that rang through
the air with the clearness of a golden bell. The sweet liquid notes were
those of an old Norwegian mountain melody, one of those wildly pathetic
_folk-songs_ that seem to hold all the sorrow, wonder, wistfulness, and
indescribable yearning of a heart too full for other speech than music.
He started to his feet and looked around him for the singer. There was
no one visible. The amber streaks in the sky were leaping into crimson
flame; the Fjord glowed like the burning lake of Dante's vision; one
solitary sea-gull winged its graceful, noiseless flight far above, its
white pinions shimmering like jewels as it crossed the radiance of the
heavens. Other sign of animal life there was none. Still the hidden
voice rippled on in a stream of melody, and the listener stood amazed
and enchanted at the roundness and distinctness of every note that fell
from the lips of the unseen vocalist.

"A woman's voice," he thought; "but where is the woman?"

Puzzled, he looked to the right and left, then out to the shining Fjord,
half expecting to see some fisher-maiden rowing along, and singing as
she rowed, but there was no sign of any living creature. While he
waited, the voice suddenly ceased, and the song was replaced by the
sharp grating of a keel on the beach. Turning in the direction of this
sound, he perceived a boat being pushed out by invisible