the mountains, and plunge down, and which in
these mountain-regions commonly occur during and after tempests. The
peasants related many histories of houses and people who were crushed
under them.

The road became continually more and more difficult. They were often
obliged to wade through running rivers, and to pass over snow-bridges,
under which the rivers had made themselves a path. Harald, alike bold,
as prudent and determined, often averted danger at his own risk, from
Mrs. Astrid and Susanna. Neither was he pale any longer. The exertions
and fever, which nobody suspected, made his cheeks glow with the finest
crimson.

In the afternoon, they had reached the highest point of the rocks. Here
were piled up two great heaps of stones, in the neighbourhood of a
little sea called Skiftesjoe, which is covered with never-melted ice in
the hottest summer. Here the brooks begin to run westward, and the way
begins from here to descend. The giant shapes of the Vasfjern and
Ishaug, together with other lofty snow-mountains, showed themselves in
perspective.

The wind was now almost still; but it began to snow violently, and the
cloudy sky sank down, dark and heavy as lead, upon the travellers.

"We must hasten, hasten," said the old Halling peasant, as he looked
round with an intelligent glance to the party whom he led, "else we
shall be snowed up on the mountains, as it happened to the late Queen
Margaret, when----"

He ended not, for his horse stumbled suddenly on a steep descent, and
threw him over. The old man's head struck violently against a stone, and
he remained lying senseless. It was a full hour before they succeeded in
bringing him to consciousness. But the blow had been so severe, and the
old man was so confused in his head, that he could no longer serve as
guide. They were obliged to place him on the same horse as his grandson
rode, and the high-spirited young man took charge of him with the
greatest tenderness. Harald rode now at the head of the party, but every
moment increased the difficulties of his undertaking, for the snow fell
with such terrible rapidity, and the thickness of the air prevented him
distinguishing with certainty "the comfortable waymarks,"--the
traveller's only means of safety. They were obliged often to make
windings and turnings, to come again upon the right path. Nevertheless,
they succeeded in reaching Bjoeroei-Saeter, an uninhabited Saeter, but which
stands upon the broad and rapid Bj