"And so," she added simply, "I had to get another sweetheart."
"Aa ja," said the Sorenskriver. "I expect there was no difficulty about that."
"No," she answered, "thou art right."
And she beat a sudden retreat, as though she had said too much; but she returned of her own accord, and continued:
"And the second time I saw the Huldre it was on the heath. I had gone out alone to look for some of the cows who had not come home, and I saw her on horseback. Her beautiful green dress covered the whole of Blakken's back, and her tail swept the ground. And Blakken flew, flew like lightning. And when I found the cows, they were dying. The Huldre had willed them ill. That was fifty years ago. But I see her now. No one can ever forget the Huldre."
So the evening passed, with stories of the Huldre, and the Trolds, and the mountain-people of Norwegian lore; for here were the strangers in the very birthplace of many of these weird legends, all, or most of them, part and parcel of the saeter-life; all, or most of them, woven out of the wild and lonely spirit of mountain-nature.
And then the little company passed by easy sequence to the subject of visions and dreams. Some one asked Katharine if she had ever had a vision.
"Yes," she answered; "once—once only."
"Tell it," they said.