“I hung fine garments
On two wooden men
Who stand on the wall;
Heroes they seemed to be
When they were clothed;
The unclad are despisèd.”
Hávamál.
The day had been oppressively hot, more actual heat, perhaps—reckoning by the degrees of Reaumur or Farenheit—than had been experienced on the fjeld of the Tellemark;—but that was dry, bracing, exhilarating heat, such as is felt on the mountain side; this was the moist, feverish warmth, caused by the sun’s rays acting on the wide expanse of the Wener Sjön and its marshy shores, and secretly and imperceptibly drawing up vapours, which would eventually fall in rain,—not, perhaps, on the spot from which they had been raised, but on the cold distant mountains of Fille Fjeld, which at once attracted and condensed them. There was not a cloud in the sky, but the sun would not shine brightly or cheerily either.
The long summer’s day was, however, drawing to a close, and the party were sitting at the extreme end of a little jetty which Moodie had built out into the river on piles of solid fir. This was covered with an awning of striped duck,—of little use as an awning so late in the day, for the sun was low enough to peep under it, but still kept up, partly to tempt the air of wind, which every now and then fluttered its vandyked border, and partly as a preservative against the dews, which would be sure to fall as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon.