The feeling of terror, the crushing sense of guilt which Bjoernson has so strikingly portrayed in the first chapters of "In God's Way," were familiar to his own childhood. In every life, as in every race, the God of fear precedes the God of love. And in Northern Norway, where nature seems so tremendous and man so insignificant, no boy escapes these phantoms of dread which clutch him with icy fingers. But as a counterbalancing force in the young Bjoernson, we have his confidence in the strength and good sense of his gigantic father, who could thrash the strongest champion in the parish. He used to stand in the evening on the beach "and gaze at the play of the sunshine upon fjord and mountain, until he wept, as if he had done something wrong. Now he would suddenly stop in this or that valley, while running on skees, and stand spell-bound by its beauty and a longing which he could not comprehend, but which was so great that in the midst of the highest joy he was keenly conscious of a sense of confinement and sorrow."[2] "We catch a glimpse in these childish memories," says Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen, "of the remarkable character, we are about to depict: Being the son of a giant, he is ever ready to strike out with a heavy hand, when he thinks that anyone is encroaching upon what he deems the right. But this same pugnacious man, whom it is so hard to overcome, can be overwhelmed by an emotion and surrender himself to it with his whole being." [2] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, pp. 450, 451. At the age of twelve Bjoernson was sent to the Latin school at Molde, where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook no restraints, and looked longingly homeward to the wide mountain plains, the foaming rivers where the trout leaped in the summer night, and the calm fjord where you might drift blissfully along, as it were, suspended in the midst of the vast, blue, ethereal space. And when the summer vacation came, with its glorious freedom and irresponsibility, he would roam at his own sweet will through forest and field, until hunger and fatigue forced him to return to his father's parsonage.