, delicate string was his mother; the one that lay close beside
it, and always accompanied his mother, was Ragnhild. The coarse string,
which he seldom ventured to play on, was his father. But of the last
solemn string he was half afraid, and he gave no name to it. When he
played a wrong note on the E string, it was the cat; but when he took a
wrong note on his father's string, it was the ox. The bow was Blessom,
who drove from Copenhagen to Vaage in one night. And every tune he
played represented something. The one containing the long solemn tones
was his mother in her black dress. The one that jerked and skipped was
like Moses, who stuttered and smote the rock with his staff. The one
that had to be played quietly, with the bow moving lightly over the
strings, was the hulder in yonder fog, calling together her cattle,
where no one but herself could see.

But the music wafted him onward over the mountains, and a great yearning
took possession of his soul. One day, when his father told about a
little boy who had been playing at the fair and who had earned a great
deal of money, Thrond waited for his mother in the kitchen and asked her
softly if he could not go to the fair and play for people.

"Whoever heard of such a thing!" said his mother; but she immediately
spoke to his father about it.

"He will get out into the world soon enough," answered the father; and
he spoke in such a way that the mother did not ask again.

Shortly after this, the father and mother were talking at table about
some new settlers who had recently moved up on the mountain and were
about to be married. They had no fiddler for the wedding, the father
said.

"Could not I be the fiddler?" whispered the boy, when he was alone in
the kitchen once more with his mother.

"What, a little boy like you?" said she; but she went out to the barn
where his father was and told him about it.

"He has never been in the parish," she added; "he has never seen a
church."

"I should not think you would ask about such things," said Alf; but
neither did he say anything more, and so the mother thought she had
permission. Consequently she went over to the new settlers and offered
the boy's services.

"The way he plays," said she, "no little boy has ever played before;"
and the boy was to be allowed to come.

What joy there was at home! Thrond played from morning until evening and
practised new tunes; at night he dreamed about them: they bore him far
over the