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And there they stood, all gazing at the bewildered traveler, who indeed was no less startled than they, and as utterly unable to account for his own sudden apparition. After a long pause, he summoned all his courage, fixed his eyes intently on the group of the girls, and with a few rapid steps advanced toward Aasa, whom he seized by the hand and asked, "Are you not my maiden of yester-eve?"
Now Aasa was eighteen years old, and could knit, weave, and spin, and it was full time that wooers should come. "But that is the consequence of living in such an out-of-the-way place," said her mother; "who will risk his limbs to climb that neck-breaking rock? and the round-about way over the forest is rather too long for a wooer."
Down there in the water, where a stubborn pebble kept chafing a precipitous little side current, clear tiny pearl-drops would leap up from the stream, and float half-wonderingly downward from rapid to rapid, until they lost themselves in the whirl of some stronger current. Thus sat Aasa and gazed and gazed, and in one moment she seemed to see what in the next moment she saw not.
Aasa was rich; he had nothing; it was a reason for delay, but hardly a conclusive one. They did not know him; he must go out in the world and prove himself worthy of her. He would come back when he should have compelled the world to respect him; for as yet he had done nothing.
"We sing," answered she, as it were at random, because the word came into her mind; "and what do you do, where you come from?" "I gather song." "Have you ever heard the forest sing?" asked she, curiously. "That is why I came here." And again they walked on in silence. It was near midnight when they entered the large hall at Kvaerk. Aasa went before, still leading the young man by the hand.
"If that is your object," remarked Lage, "I think you have hit upon the right place in coming here. You will be able to pick up many an odd bit of a story from the servants and others hereabouts, and you are welcome to stay here with us as long as you choose." Lage could not but attribute to Vigfusson the merit of having kept Aasa at home a whole day, and that in the month of midsummer.
Here the young man paused; his eyes gleamed, his pale cheeks flushed, and there was a warmth and an enthusiasm in his words which alarmed Lage, while on Aasa it worked like the most potent charm of the ancient mystic runes; she hardly comprehended more than half of the speaker's meaning, but his fire and eloquence were on this account none the less powerful.
Aasa leaned out over the brink of the ravine, and, as far as she could distinguish anything from her dizzying height, thought she saw something gray creeping slowly up the neck-breaking mountain path; she watched it for a while, but as it seemed to advance no farther she again took refuge in her reveries.
From early dawn until evening she would roam about in forests and fields, and when late at night she stole into the room and slipped away into some corner, Lage drew a deep sigh and thought of the old tradition. Aasa was nineteen years old before she had a single wooer. But when she was least expecting it, the wooer came to her.
As for Gyda, the maid, the great task she set having been accomplished, she gave her hand to Harold, a splendid marriage completing the love romance of their lives. This romance, however, is somewhat spoiled by the fact that Harold already had a wife, Aasa, the daughter of Earl Haakon, and that he afterwards married other wives.