at the same moment Nils fell down, and, after a piercing shriek,
lay quite still.

All that night they watched by the dead. A feeling of relief came upon
them both.

"He fell of himself," Arne said simply, for at first his mother was
terrified by the sight of the axe.

"Remember, Arne, it's for your sake I've borne it all," Margit said,
weeping. "You must never leave me."

"Never, never," he answered fervently.

_II.--The Call of the Mountains_

Arne grew up reserved and shy; he went on tending the cattle and making
songs. He was now in his twentieth year. The pastor lent him books to
read, the only thing he cared for.

Many a time he would have liked to read aloud to his mother, but he
could not bring himself to do it. One of the songs he made at this time
began:

The parish is all restless, but there's peace in grove and wood.
No beadle here impounds you, to suit his crabbed mood;
No strife profanes our little church, tho' there it rages high,
But then we have no little church, and that, perhaps, is why!

The folks round about got to hear of his songs, and would have been glad
to talk to him; but Arne was shy of people and disliked them, chiefly
because he thought they disliked him.

He gave up tending the cattle, and stayed at home, looking after the
farm. He was near his mother all day now, and she would give him dainty
meals. In his heart was a song with the refrain "Over the mountains
high!" Somehow, Arne could never finish this song.

There was a field labourer named Upland Knut, at whose side Arne often
worked. This man had neither parents nor friends, and when Arne said to
him, "Have you no one at all, then, to love you?" he answered, "Ah, no!
I have no one."

Arne thought of his own mother, and his heart was full of love to her.
What if he were to lose her because he had not sufficiently prized her,
he thought; and he rushed home, to find his mother sleeping gently like
a child.

Mother and son were much together in those days, and once they agreed to
go to a wedding at a neighbouring farm.

For the first time in his life Arne drank too much, and all next day he
lay in the barn. He was full of self-reproach, and it seemed to him that
cowardice was his besetting sin.

Cowardice had been his failing as a boy. It had prevented him taking his
mother's part against his father, from leaving home, from mixing with
people. Cowardice had made him drunk, and, but for his fear and