"Why so dejected? Are you uneasy or displeased? Ah! tell it openly to me as a friend! I cannot bear to see you thus!"
"I have had a bad dream!" said Susanna, wiping away her tears and standing up, "all is so ghastly, so wild here around us. It makes me think on all the dark and sad things in the world! But it is no use troubling oneself about them," continued she more cheerfully, "it will be all well enough when the day dawns. It is the hour of darkness, the hour in which the under-earth spirits have rule!" And Susanna attempted to smile. "But what is that?" continued she, and her smile changed itself suddenly to an expression of anxiety, which made her involuntarily approach Harald. There was heard in the air a low clattering and whistling, and at the same time a mass resembling a grey cloud came from the north, spreading over the snow-fields and approaching the place where they stood. In the pale moonlight Susanna seemed to see wild shapes with horns and claws, moving themselves in the mass, and the words, "the under-earth spirits," were nearly escaping her lips.
"It is a herd of reindeer!" said Harald, smiling, who seemed to divine her thoughts, and went a few paces towards the apparition, whilst he mechanically shouldered his gun. But at the same moment the herd took another direction, and fled with wild speed towards the east. The wind rose, and swept with a mournful wail through the ice-desert.
"It is here really fearful!" said Susanna, and shuddered.
"But to-morrow evening," said Harald, cheerfully, "we shall reach Storlie-Säter, which lies below the region of snow, and then we shall find birch-woods, quite green yet, and shall meet with friendly people, and can have there a regularly comfortable inn. The day afterwards we shall have a heavy piece of road; but on that same day we shall have a view of scenes so magnificent, that you certainly will think little of the trouble, on account of the pleasure you will enjoy, for there the beautiful far exceeds the terrific. That spot between Storlie-Säter and Tverlic, where the wild Leira-river, as if in frenzy, hurls itself down over Högfjell, and with the speed of lightning and the noise of thunder rushed between and over splintered masses of rock, in part naked, in part clothed in wood, to tumble about with its rival the furious Björöja,—that spot exceeds in wild grandeur anything that man can imagine."
Thus spake Harald, to dissipate Susanna's dejection; but she listened to him half-dreaming, and said as if to herself—
"Would that we were well there, and passed it, and at our destination, and then——"
"And then?" said Harald, taking up the unfinished sentence—"what then?"
"Home with my Hulda again!" said Susanna, deeply sighing.
"What, Susanna? Will you then leave us? Do you really hate Norway?"