The evening wore on. The broad mountain-
guarded valley, flooded now to the brim with a
soft misty light, spread out about them, and
filled them with a delicious sense of security.
The fjord lifted its grave gaze toward the sky,
and deepened responsively with a bright, ever-
receding immensity. The young girl felt this
blessed peace gently stealing over her; doubt
and struggle were all past, and the sun shone
ever serene and unobscured upon the widening
expanses of the future. And in his breast, too,
that mood reigned in which life looks boundless
and radiant, human woes small or impossible,
and one's own self large and all-conquering.
In that hour they remodeled this old and
obstinate world of ours, never doubting that, if
each united his faith and strength with the
other's, they could together lift its burden.
That night was the happiest and most memorable
night in the history of the Gran Parsonage.
The pastor walked up and down on the floor,
rubbing his hands in quiet contentment. Inga,
to whom an engagement was essentially a sol-
emn affair, sat in a corner and gazed at her
sister and Strand with tearful radiance. Arnfinn
gave vent to his joy by bestowing embraces
promiscuously upon whomsoever chanced to
come in his way.
This story, however, has a brief but not
unimportant sequel. It was not many weeks after
this happy evening that Arnfinn and the maiden
with the "amusingly unclassical nose" presented
themselves in the pastor's study and asked for
his paternal and unofficial blessing.
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