ut and took it quietly, and seeing that he
wanted to be alone I left him. He meant to do for Elsket all the last
sacred offices himself.

I was so fatigued that on reaching the house I dropped off to sleep and
slept till morning, and I do not know when he came into the house, if
he came at all. When I waked early next morning he was not there, and I
rose and went up to the church to hunt for him. He was sitting quietly
beside the grave, and I saw that he had placed at her head a little
cross of birchwood, on which he had burned one word, simply,

"Elsket."

I spoke to him, asking him to come to the house.

"I cannot leave her," he said; but when I urged him he rose silently and
returned with me.

I remained with him for a while after that, and each day he went and sat
by the grave. At last I had to leave. I urged him to come with me, but
he replied always, "No, I must watch over Elsket."

It was late in the evening when we set off to cross the mountain. We
came by the same path by which I had gone, Olaf leading me as carefully
and holding me as steadily as when I went over before. I stopped at the
church to lay a few wild flowers on the little gray mound where Elsket
slept so quietly. Olaf said not a word; he simply waited till I was done
and then followed me dumbly. I was so filled with sorrow for him that
I did not, except in one place, think much of the fearful cliffs along
which we made our way. At the Devil's Seat, indeed, my nerves for a
moment seemed shaken and almost gave way as I thought of the false young
lord whose faithlessness had caused all the misery to these simple,
kindly folk, and of the fierce young Norseman who had there found so
sweet a revenge. But we came on and passed the ledge, and descending
struck the broader path just after the day broke, where it was no longer
perilous but only painful.

There Olaf paused. "I will go back if you don't want me," he said. I
did not need his services, but I urged him to come on with me--to pay a
visit to his friends. "I have none," he said, simply. Then to come home
with me and live with me in old Virginia. He said, "No," he "must watch
over Elsket." So finally I had to give in, and with a clasp of the hand
and a message to "her friend" Doctor John, to "remember Elsket," he went
back and was soon lost amid the rocks.

I was half-way down when I reached a cleared place an hour or so later,
and turned to look back. The sharp angle of the Devil's Ledge wa