ear at Erlingsen's farm.
It soon passed; for spring in Nordland lasts only a month. In that
short time had the snow first become soft, and then dingy, and then
vanished, except on the heights, and in places where it had drifted.
The streams had broken their long pause of silence, and now leaped and
rushed along, till every rock overhanging both sides of the fiord was
musical with falling waters, and glittering with silver threads,--for
the cataracts looked no more than this in so vast a scene. Every mill
was going, after the long idleness of winter; and about the bridges
which spanned the falls were little groups of the peasants gathered,
mending such as had burst with the floods, or strengthening such as did
not seem secure enough for the passage of the herds to the mountain.

Busy as the maidens were with the cows that were calving, and with the
care of the young kids, they found leisure to pry into the promise of
the spring. In certain warm nooks, where the sunshine was reflected
from the surrounding rocks, they daily watched for what else might
appear, when once the grass, of brilliant green, had shown itself from
beneath the snow. There they found the strawberry and the wild
raspberry promising to carpet the ground with their white blossoms;
while in one corner the lily of the valley began to push up its pairs of
leaves; and from the crevices of the rock, the barberry and the dwarf
birch grew, every twig showing swelling buds, or an early sprout.

While these cheerful pursuits went on out of doors during the one busy
month of spring, a slight shade of sadness was thrown over the household
within by the decline of old Ulla. It was hardly sadness; it was little
more than gravity; for Ulla herself was glad to go; Peder knew that he
should soon follow; and every one else was reconciled to one who had
suffered so long going to her rest.

"The winter and I are going together, my dear," said she one day, when
Erica placed on her pillow a green shoot of birch which she had taken
from out of the very mouth of a goat. "The hoary winter and hoary I
have lived out our time, and we are departing together. I shall make
way for you young people, and give you your turn, as he is giving way to
spring; and let nobody pretend to be sorry for it. Who pretends to be
sorry when winter is gone?"

"But winter will come again, so soon and so certainly, Ulla," said
Erica, mournfully: "and when it is come again, we shall still mis