Words sometimes haunt us long after they were uttered, especially when they were last words. So Baard's words followed Arne as he came down from the roof in the cold, and they were still with him when he went into the sitting-room in the evening. It was twilight; and Eli stood at the window, looking away over the ice which lay bright in the moonlight. Arne went to the other window, and looked out also. Indoors it was warm and quiet; outdoors it was cold, and a sharp wind swept through the vale, bending the branches of the trees, and making their shadows creep trembling on the snow. A light shone over from the parsonage, then vanished, then appeared again, taking various shapes and colors, as a distant light always seems to do when one looks at it long and intently. Opposite, the mountain stood dark, with deep shadow at its foot, where a thousand fairy tales hovered; but with its snowy upper plains bright in the moonlight. The stars were shining, and northern lights were flickering in one quarter of the sky, but they did not spread. A little way from the window, down towards the water, stood some trees, whose shadows kept stealing over to each other; but the tall ash stood alone, writing on the snow. All was silent, save now and then, when a long wailing sound was heard. "What's that?" asked Arne. "It's the weather-vane," said Eli; and after a little while she added in a lower tone, as if to herself, "it must have come unfastened." But Arne had been like one who wished to speak and could not. Now he said, "Do you remember that tale about the thrushes?" "Yes." "It was you who told it, indeed. It was a nice tale." "I often think there's something that sings when all is still," she said, in a voice so soft and low that he felt as if he heard it now for the first time. "It is the good within our own souls," he said. She looked at him as if she thought that answer meant too much; and they both stood silent a few moments. Then she asked, while she wrote with her finger on the window-pane, "Have you made any songs lately?" He blushed; but she did not see it, and so she asked once more, "How do you manage to make songs?" "Should you like to know?" "Well, yes;--I should." "I store up the thoughts that other people let slip." She was silent for a long while; perhaps thinking she might have had some thoughts fit for songs, but had let them slip. "How strange it is," she said, at last, as though to herself, and beginning to write again on the window-pane. "I made a song the first time I had seen you." "Where was that?" "Behind the parsonage, that evening you went away from there;--I saw you in the water." She laughed, and was quiet for a while. "Let me hear that song." Arne had never done such a thing before, but he repeated the song now: "Fair Venevill bounded on lithesome feet Her lover to meet," &c.[4] [4] As on page 68.