n, with a voice of authority. "I rejoice to
hear that he is superior to the popular delusions. As to his troubles
and his faults, they may be left for me to discover all in good time."

"With all my heart, sir. They are nobody's business but his own, and,
may be, Erica's. Rolf has a good heart, and I doubt not Ulla and I
shall have great comfort in him. He lives with us, sir, from this night
forwards. There is no fear that he will wish us in our graves, though
we stand between him and his marriage."

"That must be rather a painful consideration to you."

"Not at all, sir, at present. Ulla and I were all the happier, we
think, to this day, for having had four such years as these young people
have before them to know one another in, and grow suitable in notions
and habits, and study to please one another. By the time Rolf and Erica
are what we were, one or both of us will be underground, and Rolf will
have, I am certain, the pleasant feeling of having done his duty by us.
It is all as it should be, sir; and I pray that they may live to say at
our age what Ulla and I can say at the same season of our lives."

The pastor made no answer. He had not heard the last few words; for
what Peder said of being underground had plunged him into a reverie
about Peder's funeral sermon, which he should, of course, have to
preach. He was pondering how he should at once do justice to Peder's
virtues and mark his own disapprobation of the countenance Peder gave to
the superstitions of the region in which he lived. He must keep in view
the love and respect in which the old man was held by everybody, and yet
he must bear witness against the great fault above mentioned. He
composed two or three paragraphs in his imagination which he thought
would do, and then committed them to memory. He was roused from this
employment by a loud laugh from the man whose funeral he was meditating,
and saw that Peder was enjoying life at present as much as the youngest,
with a glass of punch in his hand, and a group of old men and women
round him recalling the jests of fifty years ago.

"How goes it, Rolf?" said his master, who, having done his duty in the
dancing-room, was now making his way to the card-tables, in another
apartment, to see how his guests there were entertained. Thinking that
Rolf looked very absent, as he stood, in the pause of the dance, in
silence by Erica's side, Erlingsen clapped him on the shoulder, and
said, "How goes it