IV.
Two weeks had passed since Maurice's arrival at the farm. Elsie was sitting on the topmost step of the store-house stairs, intent upon some kind of coarse knitting-work, whose bag-like convexity remotely suggested a stocking. Some straggling rays of the late afternoon sun had got tangled in the loose locks on her forehead, which shone with a golden translucence. At the foot of the stairs stood her father, polishing with a woollen rag the tarnished silver of an ancient harness. At this moment Fern was seen entering the yard at the opposite side, and with his usual brisk step approaching the store-house. Elsie, looking up from her knitting, saw at once that there was something unusual in his manner—something which in another man you might have called agitation, but which with him was but an intenser degree of self-command.
"Good-evening," he said, as he stopped in front of her father. "I have something I wish to speak with you about."
"Speak on, young man," answered Tharald, rubbing away imperturbably at one of the blinders. "Elsie isn't likely to blab, even if what you say is worth blabbing."
"It is a more serious affair than you think," continued Fern, thrusting his peaked staff deep into the sod. "If the glacier goes on advancing at this rate, your farm is doomed within a year."
The old peasant raised his grizzly head, scratched with provoking deliberation the fringe of beard which lined his face like a frame, and stared with a look of supercilious scorn at his informant.
"If our fare don't suit you," he growled, "you needn't stay. We shan't try to keep you."
"I had no thought of myself," retorted Fern, calmly; for he had by this time grown somewhat accustomed to his host's disagreeable ways. "You will no doubt have observed that the glacier has, within the last thirty years, sent out a new branch to the westward, and if this branch continues to progress at its present rate, nothing short of a miracle can save you. During the first week after my arrival it advanced fifteen feet, as I have ascertained by accurate measurements, and during the last seven days it has shot forward nineteen feet more. If next winter should bring a heavy fall of snow, the nether edge may break off, without the slightest warning, and an avalanche may sweep down upon you, carrying houses, barns, and the very soil down into the fjord. I sincerely hope that you will heed my words, and take your precautions while it is yet time. Science is not to be trifled with; it has a power of prophecy surer than that of Ezekiel or Daniel."
"The devil take both you and your science!" cried the old man, now thoroughly aroused. "If you hadn't been poking about up there, and digging your sneezing-horn in everywhere, the glacier would have kept quiet, as it has done before, as far back as man's memory goes. I knew at once that mischief was brewing when you and your black Satan came here with your pocket-furnaces, and your long-legged gazing-tubes, and all the rest of your new-fangled deviltry. If you don't hurry up and get out of my house this very day, I will whip you off the farm like a dog."