It was the general belief that the families
had made the match, and that Borghild, at
least, had hardly had any voice in the matter.
Another report was that she had flatly refused
to listen to any proposal from that quarter, and
that, when she found that resistance was vain,
she had cried three days and three nights, and
refused to take any food. When this rumor
reached the pastor's ear, he pronounced it an
idle tale; "for," said he, "Borghild has always
been a proper and well-behaved maiden, and she
knows that she must honor father and mother,
that it may be well with her, and she live long
upon the land."
But Borghild sat alone in her gable window
and looked longingly toward the ocean. The
glaciers glittered, the rivers swelled, the buds of
the forest burst, and great white sails began to
glimmer on the far western horizon.
If Truls, the Nameless, as scoffers were wont
to call him, had been a greater personage in the
valley, it would, no doubt, have shocked the
gossips to know that one fine morning he sold
his cow, his gun and his dog, and wrapped sixty
silver dollars in a leathern bag, which he sewed
fast to the girdle he wore about his waist. That
same night some one was heard playing wildly
up in the birch copse above the Skogli mansion;
now it sounded like a wail of distress, then like a
fierce, defiant laugh, and now again the music
seemed to hush itself into a heart-broken, sorrowful
moan, and the people crossed themselves, and
whispered: "Our Father;" but Borghild sat at
her gable window and listened long to the weird
strain.
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