Blanche Morgan’s surprise at the happy-looking people somehow amused him. Was it then an out-of-the-way thing for people to enjoy life? For his own part mere existence satisfied him. But then he was as yet quite unacquainted with trouble. The death of his mother when he was only eleven years old had been at the time a great grief, but it had in no way clouded his after-life, he had been scarcely old enough to realize the greatness of his loss. Its effect had been to make him cling more closely to those who were left to him—to his father, to his twin-sister Sigrid, and to the little baby Swanhild (Svarnheel), whose birth had cost so much. The home life was an extremely happy one to look back on, and now that his year of absence was over and his education finished it seemed to him that all was exactly as he would have it. Faintly in the distance he looked forward to further success and happiness; being a fervent patriot he hoped some day to be a king’s minister—the summit of a Norwegian’s ambition; and being human he had visions of an ideal wife and an ideal home of his own. But the political career could very well wait, and the wife too for the matter of that. And yet, as he walked rapidly along Kong Oscars Gade, through the Stadsport, and past the picturesque cemeteries which lie on either side of the road, he saw nothing at all but a vision of the beautiful dark gray eyes which had glanced up at him so often that afternoon, and in his mind there echoed the words of one of Bjornson’s poems: “To-day is just a day to my mind, All sunny before and sunny behind, Over the heather.” But the ending of the poem he had quite forgotten. CHAPTER II. Herr Falck lived in one of the pretty, unpretentious houses in Kalvedalen which are chiefly owned by the rich merchants of Bergen. The house stood on the right-hand side of the road, surrounded by a pretty little garden; it was painted a light-brown color, and, like most Bergen houses, it was built of wood. In the windows one could see flowers, and beyond them white muslin curtains, for æstheticism had not yet penetrated to Norway. The dark-tiled roof was outlined against a wooded hill rising immediately behind, with here and there gray rocks peeping through the summer green of the trees, while in front the chief windows looked on to a pretty terrace with carefully kept flower-beds, then down the wooded hill-side to the lake below—the Lungegaardsvand with purple and gray heights on the further shore, and on one side a break in the chain of mountains and a lovely stretch of open country. To the extreme left was the giant Ulriken, sometimes shining and glistening, sometimes frowning and dark, but always beautiful; while to the right you caught a glimpse of Bergen with its quaint cathedral tower, and away in the distance the fjord like a shining silver band in the sun.