cal cadence, through the summer stillness. Beneath the little group lay the village of Bakke, with its toy-like wooden houses, its tiny landlocked harbor and its small fleet of fishing-boats; and beyond that, the broad Hardanger Fjord stretched away, calm and blue, like a great lake, to meet the opposite shore, where a glorious confused mass of purple mountains, snow-crowned and basking in the warm sunlight, shut in the view. It was a magnificent summer day—such a day as is not too common on the rainy west coast of Norway, and Nils was enjoying it in his own manner.
"And so, you see," said he, concluding his narrative, "because the man was an honest man, and had done what was right, the good spirits gave him contentment and a light heart, which are better things than money and lands, as you will find out one of these days, if you live long enough; and the bad spirits left him, and fled away, moaning as they went, to the dark, black place in the narrow fjord from which they had come, where the rocks rise so high on either side that the blessed sunshine never touches the water, and where it is deep, deep—so deep that nobody has ever found the bottom. And the spirits plunged down under the waters; and there they must sit for another hundred years in darkness, because they tempted a good man, and failed. But the good spirits, who had done their work, and gained the battle, spread their great white wings, and flew away rejoicing to the highest mountain-tops, where they rest in their beautiful ice-palace above the clouds, and listen to music so enchanting that the organ in church is a mere nothing to it, and"
"But, Nils," interrupted a practical member of the audience, who had probably had some six winters' experience of the effects of ice and snow upon the human extremities, "isn't it very cold up there?"
"Not a bit of it," replied the unabashed narrator—"not for them, at least. Spirits don't mind the cold. And then what a palace they have got there underneath the ice! Such pillars and ceilings, and floors, and glittering thrones! You cannot even guess what it is like! But one of these days, when you are a big boy, I will take you up with me to the glacier, and we will peep down into one of the great blue rifts where the icicles hang, and where you can get a glimpse—but only a glimpse—of what is beyond. You can't go down there, or hear the music that the spirits hear, or see the things that they see; but, if you grow up a good man, you will know all about it when you die; for then the spirits will come down for you, and take you up in their arms, and in a moment you will be across the fjord, and high up among the mountains, and then"
"Nils, Nils!" broke in a grave voice from the background, "what nonsense is this that you are putting into the children's heads?"
Nils started into a sitting posture, and saw between him and the sunlight a quaint, old-world figure, clad in a long black gown and an Elizabethan ruff—the clergyman of Bakke, in fact, in the prescribed costume of his order. He scrambled to his feet, took off his hat, and scratched his head a little sheepishly.
"Children will always be getting into mischief, unless they are amused," he remarked in a depreeating tone.
"Or unless they are at school, where they ought to be now. Come, children, run away to your lessons, or you will be late, and then what will the schoolmaster say to you? And, Nils, I think you might find a better use for your time than to bewilder these little ones with stories which they must sooner or later find out to be untrue."
Nils was silent for a few seconds, gazing somewhat ruefully after his dispersed flock, which was racing down the grass slopes towards the village. Then he turned his dreamy blue eyes upon the honest square face of his interlocutor, and said,—
"Fairy-tales are not quite untrue—that is, there is more truth than falsehood in them. You must make truth pleasant to a child, or he will not care to understand it. If I tell him that beasts and birds talk together, what is the harm? It is not true, you say; and perhaps it is not—though that is a question which has never been decided, and never will be—but what is the child the worse for it? It may make him kinder to animals, and more careful of them"
"Yes, yes," interrupted the priest a little impatiently; "that is all very well; but fairy tales are one thing, and religion is another; and we must be carefurnot to confuse them, my good Nils, lest we do wrong without intending it. And, after all, these tales are best kept for the winter time, when there is less work to be done. You will never make your living, Nils, if you spend your days lying on the grass and inventing idle stories to amuse children."
