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Updated: May 31, 2025
Lage Ulfson was not the man to be afraid; yet the church-bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks; for he also heard the moan from the mountain. The year went, and Asathor returned. If he had not told his name, however, Lage would not have recognized him. That a year could work so great a change in a god, he would hardly have believed, if his own eyes had not testified to it.
Then came the third the noise grew; fourth and it sounded like a hoarse, angry hiss; when the twelfth stroke fell, silence reigned again in the forest. Vigfusson dropped the bell-rope, and with a loud voice called Lage Kvaerk and his men. He lit a torch, held it aloft over his head, and peered through the dusky night.
Anon, the muffled noise and bustle of the work being at an end, the laborers withdrew, and a strange, feverish silence seemed to brood over the forest. Lage took a step forward, and seized the bell-rope; the clear, conquering toll of the metal rung solemnly through the silence, and from the rocks, the earth, and the tree-tops, rose a fierce chorus of howls, groans, and screams.
Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way through the forest; and when that was done, he called all his household together, and told them of the power of Christ the White. Not long after he took his sons and his daughter, and hastened with them southward, until he found King Olaf.
One evening Vigfusson and old Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes.
"Aha," thought Lage, "if the king's bells are mightier than thou, then there is still hope of safety for my daughter." "Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?" asked Asathor. "I know not where she is," answered the father; and straightway he turned his eyes toward the golden cross that shone over the valley from Saint Olaf's steeple, and he called aloud on the White Christ's name.
The next morning he appeared at breakfast with his knapsack on his back, and otherwise equipped for his journey. It was of no use that Elsie cried and begged him to stay, that Lage joined his prayers to hers, and that Aasa stood staring at him with a bewildered gaze.
And, so the Saga relates, they all fell down on their knees before him, prayed for his forgiveness, and received baptism from the king's own bishop. So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk. Aasa Kvaerk loved her father well, but especially in the winter.
When Lage and his servants came home to Kvaerk with the mournful tidings of Aasa's disappearance, no one knew what to do or say. There could be no doubt that Aasa was "mountain-taken," as they call it; for there were Trolds and dwarfs in all the rocks and forests round about, and they would hardly let slip the chance of alluring so fair a maiden as Aasa was into their castles in the mountains.
There lay Lage Kvaerk, their master, still bending down over his child's pale features, and staring into her sunken eyes as if he could not believe that she were really dead. And at his side stood Vigfusson, pale and aghast, with the burning torch in his hand. The footsteps of the men awakened the father, but when he turned his face on them they shuddered and started back.
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