y not to fit him, hung
loosely on his sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons, which
were narrow where they ought to have been wide, and wide where it was
their duty to be narrow, extended their service to a little more than
the upper half of the limb, and, by a kind of compromise with the tops
of the boots, managed to protect also the lower half. His features were
delicate, and would have been called handsome had they belonged to a
proportionately delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy vagueness
which seemed to come and vanish, and to flit from one feature to
another, suggesting the idea of remoteness, and a feeling of hopeless
strangeness to the world and all its concerns.

"Do I inconvenience you, madam?" were the first words he uttered, as
Aasa in her usual abrupt manner stayed her laughter, turned her back on
him, and hastily started for the house.

"Inconvenience?" said she, surprised, and again slowly turned on her
heel; "no, not that I know."

"Then tell me if there are people living here in the neighborhood, or if
the light deceived me, which I saw from the other side of the river."

"Follow me," answered Aasa, and she naively reached him her hand; "my
father's name is Lage Ulfson Kvaerk; he lives in the large house you see
straight before you, there on the hill; and my mother lives there too."

And hand in hand they walked together, where a path had been made
between two adjoining rye-fields; his serious smile seemed to grow
milder and happier, the longer he lingered at her side, and her eye
caught a ray of more human intelligence, as it rested on him.

"What do you do up here in the long winter?" asked he, after a pause.

"We sing," answered she, as it were at random, because the word came
into her mind; "and what do you do, where you come from?"

"I gather song."

"Have you ever heard the forest sing?" asked she, curiously.

"That is why I came here."

And again they walked on in silence.

It was near midnight when they entered the large hall at Kvaerk. Aasa
went before, still leading the young man by the hand. In the twilight
which filled the house, the space between the black, smoky rafters
opened a vague vista into the region of the fabulous, and every object
in the room loomed forth from the dusk with exaggerated form and
dimensions. The room appeared at first to be but the haunt of the
spirits of the past; no human voice, no human footstep, was heard; and
the stranger instinc