It was well-nigh morn, but the dense fog still brooded over the woods, and it was dark as night. Lage was sitting on the ground, his head leaning on both his elbows; at his side lay the flickering torch, and the huge bell hung dumb overhead. In the dark he felt a hand touch his shoulder; had it happened only a few hours before, he would have shuddered; now the physical sensation hardly communicated itself to his mind, or, if it did, had no power to rouse him from his dead, hopeless apathy. Suddenly—could he trust his own ears?—the church-bell gave a slow, solemn, quivering stroke, and the fogs rolled in thick masses to the east and to the west, as if blown by the breath of the sound. Lage seized his torch, sprang to his feet, and saw—Vigfusson. He stretched his arm with the blazing torch closer to the young man’s face, stared at him with large eyes, and his lip quivered; but he could not utter a word.
“Vigfusson?” faltered he at last.
“It is I;” and the second stroke followed, stronger and more solemn than the first. The same fierce, angry voices chorused forth from every nook of the rock and the woods. Then came the third—the noise grew; fourth—and it sounded like a hoarse, angry hiss; when the twelfth stroke fell, silence reigned again in the forest. Vigfusson dropped the bell-rope, and with a loud voice called Lage Kvaerk and his men. He lit a torch, held it aloft over his head, and peered through the dusky night. The men spread through the highlands to search for the lost maiden; Lage followed close in Vigfusson’s footsteps. They had not walked far when they heard the babbling of the brook only a few feet away. Thither they directed their steps. On a large stone in the middle of the stream the youth thought he saw something white, like a large kerchief. Quick as thought he was at its side, bowed down with his torch, and—fell backward. It was Aasa, his beloved, cold and dead; but as the father stooped over his dead child the same mad laugh echoed wildly throughout the wide woods, but madder and louder than ever before, and from the rocky wall came a fierce, broken voice:
“I came at last.”
When, after an hour of vain search, the men returned to the place whence they had started, they saw a faint light flickering between the birches not fifty feet away; they formed a firm column, and with fearful hearts drew nearer. There lay Lage Kvaerk, their master, still bending down over his child’s pale features, and staring into her sunken eyes as if he could not believe that she were really dead. And at his side stood Vigfusson, pale and aghast, with the burning torch in his hand. The footsteps of the men awakened the father, but when he turned his face on them they shuddered and started back. Then Lage rose, lifted the maiden from the stone, and silently laid her in Vigfusson’s arms; her rich yellow hair flowed down over his shoulder. The youth let his torch fall into the waters, and with a sharp, serpent-like hiss its flame was quenched. He crossed the brook; the men followed, and the dark pine-trees closed over the last descendant of Lage Ulfson’s mighty race.
Footnotes:
1 ([return])
[ “I am a Dane. I speak Danish.”]