n open space, carpeted with turf and moss and flowers, where no
foot had ever trod.

"Oh, the pretty saeter!" cried Minna, giving to the upland meadow its
Norwegian name. "But how comes it here, at such a height?"

"Vegetation ceases here, it is true," said Seraphitus. "These few plants
and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow
from the polar winds. Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna," he added,
gathering a flower,--"that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen;
keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless
morning of your life. You will find no other guide to lead you again to
this saeter."

So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid the
tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages,--a marvel, brought to bloom
by the breath of angels. With girlish eagerness Minna seized the tufted
plant of transparent green, vivid as emerald, which was formed of little
leaves rolled trumpet-wise, brown at the smaller end but changing tint
by tint to their delicately notched edges, which were green. These
leaves were so tightly pressed together that they seemed to blend and
form a mat or cluster of rosettes. Here and there from this green ground
rose pure white stars edged with a line of gold, and from their throats
came crimson anthers but no pistils. A fragrance, blended of roses and
of orange blossoms, yet ethereal and fugitive, gave something as it
were celestial to that mysterious flower, which Seraphitus sadly
contemplated, as though it uttered plaintive thoughts which he alone
could understand. But to Minna this mysterious phenomenon seemed a mere
caprice of nature giving to stone the freshness, softness, and perfume
of plants.

"Why do you call it matchless? can it not reproduce itself?" she asked,
looking at Seraphitus, who colored and turned away.

"Let us sit down," he said presently; "look below you, Minna. See! At
this height you will have no fear. The abyss is so far beneath us that
we no longer have a sense of its depths; it acquires the perspective
uniformity of ocean, the vagueness of clouds, the soft coloring of the
sky. See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are
mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned."

Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen
and known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the
globe,--a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the