"Oh no, don't! but tell me, I hope you are not grieved with me?"

"Dear, how could you think so?"

"Good-bye then Ovind, and thank you for all the pleasant times we have had together!"

"Marit!"

"Yes, but now I must go, they will miss me.

"Marit,--Marit!"

"No, I daren't stay longer, Ovind; farewell!"

"Farewell!"

The rest of the evening he was, as it were, in a dream, answering absently when they spoke to him. They attributed this to the thought of his coming departure, which was quite a natural thing, and which certainly did occupy his attention at the moment when the schoolmaster took his leave, and slipped something into his hand, which he afterwards found to be a five dollar piece. Soon, however, it passed out of his mind, and he thought only of the words that had come down from the ridge and gone up again.

CHAP. VIII.