n
the part of several.

My first adviser undertook a long explanation, but though he labored
faithfully I could make out no more than that it was something about
"Elsket" and "the Devil's Ledge," and men who had disappeared. This was
a new revelation. What object had my friend? He had never said a word
of this. Indeed, he had, I now remembered, said very little at all about
the people. He had exhausted his eloquence on the fish. I recalled his
words when I asked him about Elsket: "She is a daughter of the Vikings,
poor thing." That was all. Had he been up to a practical joke? If so, it
seemed rather a sorry one to me just then. But anyhow I could not draw
back now. I could never face him again if I did not go on, and what was
more serious, I could never face myself.

I was weak enough to have a thought that, after all, the mysterious Olaf
might not come; but the recollection of the fish of which my friend
had spoken as if they had been the golden fish of the "Arabian Nights,"
banished that. I asked about the streams around L----. "Yes, there was
good fishing." But they were all too anxious to tell me about the danger
of going over the mountain to give much thought to the fishing. "No
one without Olafs blood could cross the Devil's Ledge." "Two men had
disappeared three years ago." "A man had disappeared there last year. He
had gone, and had never been heard of afterward. The Devil's Ledge was a
bad pass."

"Why don't they look into the matter?" I asked.

The reply was as near a shrug of the shoulders as a Norseman can
accomplish.

"It was not easy to get the proof; the mountain was very dangerous,
the glacier very slippery; there were no witnesses," etc. "Olaf of the
Mountain was not a man to trouble."

"He hates Englishmen," said one, significantly.

"I am not an Englishman, I am an American," I explained.

This had a sensible effect. Several began to talk at once. One had a
brother in Idaho, another had cousins in Nebraska, and so on.

The group had by this time been augmented by the addition of almost
the entire population of the settlement; one or two rosy-cheeked women,
having babies in their arms, standing in the rain utterly regardless of
the steady downpour.

It was a propitious time. "Can I get a place to stay here?" I inquired
of the group generally.

"Yes,--oh, yes." There was a consultation in which the name of "Hendrik"
was heard frequently, and then a man stepped forward and taking up my
bag