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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. “No one without Olafs blood could cross the Devil’s Ledge.” “Two men had disappeared three years ago.” “A man had disappeared there last year. He had gone, and had never been heard of afterward. The Devil’s Ledge was a bad pass.”

“Why don’t they look into the matter?” I asked.

The reply was as near a shrug of the shoulders as a Norseman can accomplish.

“It was not easy to get the proof; the mountain was very dangerous, the glacier very slippery; there were no witnesses,” etc. “Olaf of the Mountain was not a man to trouble.”

“He hates Englishmen,” said one, significantly.

“I am not an Englishman, I am an American,” I explained.

This had a sensible effect. Several began to talk at once. One had a brother in Idaho, another had cousins in Nebraska, and so on.

The group had by this time been augmented by the addition of almost the entire population of the settlement; one or two rosy-cheeked women, having babies in their arms, standing in the rain utterly regardless of the steady downpour.

It was a propitious time. “Can I get a place to stay here?” I inquired of the group generally.

“Yes,–oh, yes.” There was a consultation in which the name of “Hendrik” was heard frequently, and then a man stepped forward and taking up my bag and rod-case, walked off, I following, escorted by a number of my new friends.

I had been installed in Hendrik’s little house about an hour, and we had just finished supper, when there was a murmur outside, and then the door opened, and a young man stepping in, said something so rapidly that I understood only that it concerned Olaf of the Mountain, and in some way myself.

“Olaf of the Mountain is here and wants to speak to you,” said my host. “Will you go?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why does he not come in?”

“He will not come in,” said my host; “he never does come in.”

“He is at the church-yard,” said the messenger; “he always stops there.” They both spoke broken English.

I arose and went out, taking the direction indicated. A number of my friends stood in the road or street as I passed along, and touched their caps to me, looking very queer in the dim twilight. They gazed at me curiously as I walked by.

I turned the corner of a house which stood half in the road, and just in front of me, in its little yard, was the little white church with its square, heavy, short spire. At the gate stood a tall figure, perfectly motionless, leaning on a long staff. As I approached I saw that he was an elderly man. He wore a long beard, once yellow but now gray, and he looked very straight and large. There was something grand about him as he stood there in the dusk.

I came quite up to him. He did not move.

“Good-evening,” I said.

“Good-evening.”

“Are you Mr. Hovedsen?” I asked, drawing out my letter.

“I am Olaf of the Mountain,” he said slowly, as if his name embraced the whole title.

I handed him the letter.

“You are—-?”

“I am—-” taking my cue from his own manner.

“The friend of her friend?”

“His great friend.”

“Can you climb?”

“I can.”

“Are you steady?”

“Yes.”

“It is well; are you ready?”

I had not counted on this, and involuntarily I asked, in some surprise, “To-night?”

“To-night. You cannot go in the day.”

I thought of the speech I had heard: “No one goes over the mountain except at night,” and the ominous conclusion, “Who goes over the mountain comes no more.” My strange host, however, diverted my thoughts.