"And then we sold all sorts of things, and drew numbers, and had a lucky bag; and Hans Jacobsen played on the melodeon; and missionary Hansen told us about the poor blacks and all his blessed work, and how the Lord guided his footsteps through the sandy wastes, and how he baptized a chief and all his wives in the waters of faith. And Nils Pettersen says they took out more raw alcohol and spent gun-powder and spoilt cotton goods than the fear of God; and that the 'Bird o' Faith' cleared one hundred per cent on her freight. But Nils Pettersen was always a liar; and oh it was a blessed thing to do all that for the heathen blacks! And then the kapelan spoke again, a touching discourse!"
And she refills her glass, dodging his stick and watching him out of the tail of her eye as she turns the heel of her stocking, and repeats the whole of the sermon. His vocabulary is exhausted, and he is inventing the weirdest oaths, hurling them forth, a deep accompaniment to her shriller sermon, with its sanctimonious sing-song tune and unctuous phrasing; for she is, perhaps unwittingly, mimicking the kapelan to the life. He is getting tired and drowsy, the cognac is rising to her head, and even a kapelan's sermon must draw to a close; and as a mother will change her lullaby into a quick hushoo, and pat mechanically with a drowsy nod as the child drops to sleep, so Marie puts her knitting tidily into her apron pocket, and folding her withered old hands breaks into a hymn. He opens his eyes languidly, and protests feebly with a last damn; but Marie has exorcised the devil this time. His jaw drops, and muttering softly, he falls into heavy sleep; and she sings on, till her head too droops on her breast, and her quavering old woman's voice dies away in an abortive allelujah!
And the motes dance in the golden bar of a waning sun-ray that pierces the room and crosses the motionless figures; and above stairs the little mistress is wrapped in rare, delicious, dreamless slumber. And I like to think that the recording angel registered that sleep to the credit of Jomfru Marie Larsen!
II.
A SHADOW'S SLANT.
It is a sunny afternoon in mid-summer. A phaeton drawn by a pair of sturdy gray Stavanger horses, whose dainty heads and the mark of Saint Olav's thumb on their throats tell their race, is dashing along at a break-neck pace. The whip curls over them, and the vehicle sways a little to one side. Two great hounds bound along on the right of it.
A strip of blue fjord and a background of dark mountains, with the cool ice-kisses of the snow queen still resting on their dusky heads, can be seen at intervals through the fir and pine trees. A squirrel scrambles up a rowan-tree, and a cattle-bell tingles far in the woods. Nature has ever a discordant note in its symphony. A little brown bird is fluttering in helpless, terrified jerks; it emits, as it rises and falls, a sharp sound between a chirp and a squeak. A hawk is swooping over it: a poise—a dip—a few feathers float with the breeze, and hawk soars up with its prey in its claws.
The red-brown eyes that gleam out of the small, sallow face of the woman who sits on the left side of the phaeton close for a second; the delicate nostrils quiver, the lips tighten over a sigh; then the lids rise again, the eyes are darker, the pupils have a trick of dilating; a smile subtle in meaning, for much of mocking pain and bitterness is expressed in its brief passage, flits across her face.
A savage jerk! the horses stop.
"Kiss me!" says the man who is driving. His voice is harsh, and the eyes that scan her face have a lurid light in them; and as he speaks a smell of spirit mingles with the smell of the pine chips. Her lips tighten still more; she turns to obey. She has to rise up a little; he is very tall. His nose is powerful like a hawk's beak, and his beard is stirred by the breeze, and his eyes peer out from under their fringe of black lashes with a cruel, passionate gleam. She almost touches his face, but falls back from a rough shove:—