Elsket | Page 2

for an expected guest.
There was none in whom I could discover any indication that he was
not a resident of the straggling little settlement. They all stood quietly
about gazing at me and talking in low tones among themselves,
chewing tobacco or smoking their pipes, as naturally as if they were in
Virginia or Kentucky, only, if possible, in a somewhat more ruminant
manner. It gave me the single bit of home feeling I could muster, for it
was, I must confess, rather desolate standing alone in a strange land,
under those beetling crags, with the clouds almost resting on our heads,
and the rain coming down in a steady, wet, monotonous fashion. The

half-dozen little dark log or frame-houses, with their double windows
and turf roofs, standing about at all sorts of angles to the road, as if they
had rolled down the mountain like the great bowlders beyond them,
looked dark and cheerless. I was weak enough to wish for a second that
I had waited a few days for the rainy spell to be over, but two little
bareheaded children, coming down the road laughing and chattering,
recalled me to myself. They had no wrapping whatever, and nothing on
their heads but their soft flaxen hair, yet they minded the rain no more
than if they had been ducklings. I saw that these people were used to
rain. It was the inheritance of a thousand years. Something, however,
had to be done, and I recognized the fact that I was out of the beaten
track of tourists, and that if I had to stay here a week, on the prudence
of my first step depended the consideration I should receive. It would
not do to be hasty. I had a friend with me which had stood me in good
stead before, and I applied to it now. Walking slowly up to the largest,
and one of the oldest men in the group, I drew out my pipe and a bag of
old Virginia tobacco, free from any flavor than its own, and filling the
pipe, I asked him for a light in the best phrase-book Norsk I could
command. He gave it, and I placed the bag in his hand and motioned
him to fill his pipe. When that was done I handed the pouch to another,
and motioned him to fill and pass the tobacco around. One by one they
took it, and I saw that I had friends. No man can fill his pipe from
another's bag and not wish him well.
"Does any of you know Olaf of the Mountain?" I asked. I saw at once
that I had made an impression. The mention of that name was evidently
a claim to consideration. There was a general murmur of surprise, and
the group gathered around me. A half-dozen spoke at once.
"He was at L---- last week," they said, as if that fact was an item of
extensive interest.
"I want to go there," I said, and then was, somehow, immediately
conscious that I had made a mistake. Looks were exchanged and some
words were spoken among my friends, as if they were oblivious of my
presence.
"You cannot go there. None goes there but at night," said one,

suggestively.
"Who goes over the mountain comes no more," said another, as if he
quoted a proverb, at which there was a faint intimation of laughter on
the part of several.
My first adviser undertook a long explanation, but though he labored
faithfully I could make out no more than that it was something about
"Elsket" and "the Devil's Ledge," and men who had disappeared. This
was a new revelation. What object had my friend? He had never said a
word of this. Indeed, he had, I now remembered, said very little at all
about the people. He had exhausted his eloquence on the fish. I recalled
his words when I asked him about Elsket: "She is a daughter of the
Vikings, poor thing." That was all. Had he been up to a practical joke?
If so, it seemed rather a sorry one to me just then. But anyhow I could
not draw back now. I could never face him again if I did not go on, and
what was more serious, I could never face myself.
I was weak enough to have a thought that, after all, the mysterious Olaf
might not come; but the recollection of the fish of which my friend had
spoken as if they had been the golden fish of the "Arabian Nights,"
banished that. I asked about the streams around L----. "Yes, there was
good fishing." But they were all too anxious to tell me about the danger
of going over the mountain to give much thought to the fishing.