htest reason to suppose
that any spirit had been employed to vex and alarm her. The fog and the
pirates had overtaken and frightened many in the fiord with whom Nipen
had no quarrel. Rolfs imprisonment, and all the sorrows that belonged
to it, had been owing to his own imprudence. The appearance of a double
sun the night before was nothing uncommon, and was known to take place
when the atmosphere was in a particular state. She herself had seen
that no Wood-Demon had touched the axes in this very grove last night;
and that it was no mountain-sprite, but a Laplander, who had taken up
the first Gammel cheese. She had also witnessed how absurdly mistaken
Hund had been about the boat having been spirited away, and Vogel island
being enchanted, and Rolf's ghost being allowed to haunt him. Here was
a case before her very eyes of the way in which people with
superstitious minds may misunderstand what happens to themselves.

"Oh!" exclaimed Erica, dropping her hands from before her glowing face,
"if I dared but think there were no bad spirits--if I dared only hope
that everything that happens is done by God's own hand, I could bear
everything! I would never be afraid again!"

"It is what I believe," said the bishop. Laying his hand on her head,
he continued, "We know that the very hairs of your head are all
numbered. I see that you are weary of your fears--that you have long
been heavy-laden with anxiety. It is you, then, that He invites to
trust Him when He says by the lips of Jesus, `Come, ye that are weary
and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.'"

"Rest--rest is what I have wanted," said Erica, while her tears flowed
gently; "but Peder and Ulla did not believe as you do, and could not
explain things; and--"

"You should have asked me," said M. Kollsen; "I could have explained
everything."

"Perhaps so, sir; but--but, M. Kollsen, you always seemed angry; and
you said you despised us for believing anything that you did not: and it
is the most difficult thing in the world to ask questions which one
knows will be despised."

M. Kollsen glanced in the bishop's face, to see how he took this, and
how he meant to support the pastor's authority. The bishop looked sad,
and said nothing.

"And then," continued Erica, "there were others who laughed--even Rolf
himself laughed; and what one fears becomes only the more terrible when
it is laughed at."

"Very true," said the bishop. "When Jesus sat on the well in