e. Though winter still
lingered, puffs of warm air laden with the scent of the birch-trees,
already adorned with their rosy efflorescence, and of the larches,
whose silken tassels were beginning to appear,--breezes tempered by the
incense and the sighs of earth,--gave token of the glorious Northern
spring, the rapid, fleeting joy of that most melancholy of Natures.
The wind was beginning to lift the veil of mist which half-obscured the
gulf. The birds sang. The bark of the trees where the sun had not yet
dried the clinging hoar-frost shone gayly to the eye in its fantastic
wreathings which trickled away in murmuring rivulets as the warmth
reached them. The three friends walked in silence along the shore.
Wilfrid and Minna alone noticed the magic transformation that was taking
place in the monotonous picture of the winter landscape. Their companion
walked in thought, as though a voice were sounding to her ears in this
concert of Nature.

Presently they reached the ledge of rocks through which the Sieg had
forced its way, after escaping from the long avenue cut by its waters
in an undulating line through the forest,--a fluvial pathway flanked
by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a
cathedral. Looking back from that vantage-ground, the whole extent of
the fiord could be seen at a glance, with the open sea sparkling on the
horizon beyond it like a burnished blade.

At this moment the mist, rolling away, left the sky blue and clear.
Among the valleys and around the trees flitted the shining fragments,--a
diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze. The torrent rolled on
toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with every
color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic fires along
the many-tinted scarf of waters. The rugged ledge on which they stood
was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble mat variegated
by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken fabric. Shrubs,
already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands. Their waving foliage,
eager for the freshness of the water, drooped its tresses above the
stream; the larches shook their light fringes and played with the pines,
stiff and motionless as aged men. This luxuriant beauty was foiled by
the solemn colonnades of the forest-trees, rising in terraces upon the
mountains, and by the calm sheet of the fiord, lying below, where the
torrent buried its fury and was still. Beyond, the sea hemmed in