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Erica forgot heat, weariness, and the safety of her property, and ran on towards the singing voice. In five minutes she found the singer, Frolich, lying along the ground and picking cloud-berries with which she was filling her basket for supper. "Where is Erlingsen? quick quick!" cried Erica. "My father? You may just see him with your good eyes, up there."

If such language as M. Kollsen's were allowed, they looked for nothing less than to have their way beset by offended spirits; so that Erlingsen might hear in the morning of some being frozen, some being lost in the fiord, and others tumbled from precipices. M. Erlingsen made haste to speak. He did not use any scruples with the young clergyman.

Erlingsen arrived before he had been thus engaged five minutes; and indeed before he had been more than a quarter of an hour altogether at the place of meeting. "My dear master!" exclaimed Rolf, on seeing him coming, "have pity on Erica and me; and hear what I have to tell you, that I may be gone." "You shall be gone at once, my good fellow!

"Is there any one who does not feel," added Erlingsen, "that the innocent should be gay, safe as they are in the good-will of God and man? Come, neighbours, to your dancing again! You have lost too much time already. Now, Oddo, play your best, and you, Hund." "I hope," said Oddo, "that if any mischief is to come, it will fall upon me. We'll see how I shall bear it."

And her kind and grateful mistress kissed Erica's cheek, though Erica tried to explain that she was thinking most of some one else, when she undertook this expedition. "Then let him thank you in his own way," replied Madame Erlingsen. "Meantime, why should not I thank you in mine?" Stiorna here opened her eyes for an instant.

By means of this glass, the bishop, M. Kollsen, or Madame Erlingsen announced, from time to time, what was doing, as the evening advanced; how parties of two or three were leaving Saltdalen, creeping towards the farm under cover of rising grounds, rocks, and pine-woods; how small companies, well-armed, were hidden in every place of concealment near Erlingsen's; and how there seemed to be a great number of women about the place.

First, he talked politics a little with his host, by the fire-side; in the midst of which conversation Erlingsen managed to intimate that nothing would be heard of Nipen to-day, if the subject was let alone by themselves: a hint which the clergyman was willing to take, as he supposed it meant in deference to his views.

Once a year, too, Erlingsen wrapped himself in furs, and drove himself in his sledge, followed by one of his housemen on another and a larger, to the great winter fair at Tronyem, where the Lapps repaired to sell their frozen reindeer meat, their skins, a few articles of manufacture, and where travelling Russian merchants came with the productions of other climates, and found eager customers in the inhabitants who thronged to this fair to make their purchases.

She listened with submission, wiping away her quiet tears as they discoursed; but no one could ever get her to say that she doubted whether there was a Wood-Demon, or that she was not afraid of what he would do if offended. Erlingsen and his wife always treated her superstition as a weakness; and when she was not present, they ridiculed it. Yet they saw that it had its effect on their daughters.

"And I think," said Erlingsen, "it is pretty plain that my little girls have had pleasure in their part of the work. It is my belief that they are sorry it is so nearly done."