PART I A stirring clang of swords, echoing from the glass roof of the station; the ring of steel sounding through the hissing of steam, noise of laughter and talk, mingled with the dense dull sound of truck wheels, of footsteps, of luggage loading. Every time a fresh succession of officers thronged the glass doors, […]

CHAPTER I Ella was generally known as the girl with the plait. But, thick as the plait was, if it had belonged to any one less shapely, less blonde, less sprightly, hardly any one would have noticed it; the merry life which it led behind her would have passed unobserved, and that, although it was […]

There lived last century, in one of the high-lying inland valleys of Norway, a fiddler, who has become in some degree a legendary personage. Of the tunes and marches ascribed to him, some are said to have been inspired by the Trolls, one he heard from the devil himself, another he made to save his […]

There was once a man named Alf, who had raised great expectations among his fellow-parishioners because he excelled most of them both in the work he accomplished and in the advice he gave. Now, when this man was thirty years old, he went to live up the mountain, and cleared a piece of land for […]