ging a song, in
which this stanza occurred:

"A woman's frown, a woman's smile,
Nor hate nor fondness prove;
For maidens smile on him they hate,
And fly from him they love."

Then it had occurred to him for the first time in his life that a
woman's behavior need not be the logical indicator of her deepest
feelings, and, enriched with this joyful discovery, inspired with new
hope, he had returned, but had not dared at once to seek the Parsonage,
until he could invent some plausible reason for his return; but his
imagination was very poor, and he had found none, except that he loved
the pastor's beautiful daughter.

The evening wore on. The broad mountain-guarded valley, flooded now to
the brim with a soft misty light, spread out about them, and filled
them with a delicious sense of security. The fjord lifted its grave gaze
toward the sky, and deepened responsively with a bright, ever-receding
immensity. The young girl felt this blessed peace gently stealing over
her; doubt and struggle were all past, and the sun shone ever serene and
unobscured upon the widening expanses of the future. And in his breast,
too, that mood reigned in which life looks boundless and radiant, human
woes small or impossible, and one's own self large and all-conquering.
In that hour they remodeled this old and obstinate world of ours, never
doubting that, if each united his faith and strength with the other's,
they could together lift its burden.

That night was the happiest and most memorable night in the history of
the Gran Parsonage. The pastor walked up and down on the floor,
rubbing his hands in quiet contentment. Inga, to whom an engagement was
essentially a solemn affair, sat in a corner and gazed at her sister and
Strand with tearful radiance. Arnfinn gave vent to his joy by bestowing
embraces promiscuously upon whomsoever chanced to come in his way.

This story, however, has a brief but not unimportant sequel. It was not
many weeks after this happy evening that Arnfinn and the maiden with the
"amusingly unclassical nose" presented themselves in the pastor's study
and asked for his paternal and unofficial blessing. But the pastor, I
am told, grew very wroth, and demanded that his nephew should first
take his second and third degrees, attaching, besides, some very odious
stipulations regarding average in study and college standing, before
there could be any talk about engagement or matrimony. So, at