your love, and deem your
affectionate and noble heart worthy of my acceptance; but you know not
the false position in which I stand, or you would favour that apparent
apathy which wounds my soul. Had it been in my destiny, I could have
dwelt for ever among these mountains, with no other minister to my love
than your own self; but to take you hence to England, and refuse you the
cheerfulness and honourable endearments of wedlock, is to humiliate my
own conscience, and covet the curse of God in your hatred."

I had scarcely spoken, when a flash of light shot across the sky, and
before the girl had even ceased to start at the sight, the long, loud
roar of a gun succeeded. I understood the signal. The token of a
sincerely cherished, and steadfast friendship, I had worn, since I left
England, a valuable ring, and removing it from my finger, I took
Gunilda's hand and replaced her gift with mine. Gunilda held up her hand
before her for some minutes, without the utterance of a word, and gazed
on the brilliant jewel, then allowing her hand to fall by her side,
burst into a passionate flood of tears.

Again, a sudden gleam of light glanced through the forest, and, a moment
after, the booming of another gun rolled away down the valleys, and over
the rocks, with a faint, and then a loudly reviving echo.

"Good bye, Gunilda," I said. She spoke not, nor moved; but her shoulders
shook with a convulsive heaving.

"Will you not shake hands with me?" I asked, my voice almost indistinct
with emotion. Still, she spoke not. I kneeled down, for Gunilda had
reseated herself near her mother's grave, and raising her hand, I took
it in mine, and pressed it. I felt the pressure returned, and allowing
her small passive hand to fall gently again in her lap, I rose.

"God bless you!" I said.

She uttered a low, passionate cry, and then checking her anguish,
murmured faintly,

"Farvael!" and covering her face with her hands, fell, sobbing violently,
on her mother's grave.

I hurried from the spot; and hardly knew that I had left Gunilda, until
the boat ran against the cutter's bow, and roused me as from a dream.

When I got on board, I found that the wind was still too trivial to
allow us even to drift out of the harbour, and the cutter lay the whole
night immoveably on the water.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE YACHT UNDER SAIL--JACKO OVERBOARD--FREDRICKSVAERN
--THE UNION JACK--SCENERY ON THE LARVIG RIVER--TRANSIT
OF TIMBER--SALMON FISHIN