rdingly
they awarded the farm to Arne. Then swifter than thought Ulf's knife
flew from its sheath; Arne turned pale as death and quivered like an
aspen leaf. The umpires rushed forward to shield him. There was a
moment of breathless suspense. Then Ulf with a wild shout hurled his
knife away, and leaped over the brink of the precipice down into the
icy gulf below. A remote hollow rumbling rose from the abyss, followed
by a deeper stillness. The men peered out over the edge of the rock;
the glacier lay vast and serene, with its cold, glittering surface
glaring against the sky, and a thousand minute rivulets filled the air
with their melodious tinkling.

"God be his judge and yours," said the men to Arne, and hastened away.

From that day Arne received the surname Ormgrass (literally Wormgrass,
Fern), and his farm was called the Ormgrass farm. And the name has
clung to his descendants until this day. Somehow, since the death of
Ulf, the family had never been well liked, and in their proud
seclusion, up under the eternal ice-fields, they sought their
neighbors even less than they were themselves sought. They were indeed
a remarkably handsome race, of a light build, with well-knit frames,
and with a touch of that wild grace which makes a beast of prey seem
beautiful and dangerous.

In the beginning of the present century Arne's grandson, Gudmund
Ormgrass, was the bearer of the family name and the possessor of the
estate. As ill luck would have it, his two sons, Arne and Tharald,
both wooed the same maiden,--the fairest and proudest maiden in all
the parish. After long wavering she at last was betrothed to Arne, as
some thought, because he, being the elder, was the heir to the farm.
But in less than a year, some two weeks before the wedding was to be,
she bore a child; and Arne was not its father.

That same night the brothers met in an evil hour; from words they
came to blows, knives were drawn, and after midnight Tharald was
carried up to the farm with a deep wound in his shoulder and quite
unconscious. He hovered for a week on the brink of death; then the
wound began to heal and he recovered rapidly. Arne was nowhere to be
found; rumor reported that he had been seen the day after the affray,
on board a brig bound for Hull with lumber. At the end of a year
Tharald married his brother's bride and took possession of the farm.

II.

One morning in the early summer of 1868, some thirty-five years after
the events ju