"Ah, so!--you are at school at the parson's, eh!--hush, hush! little piggies, then!----The road to Stubdale, do you say?----Just look at that one now! Will you let the others get something as well, you rascal! Hush, hush! Be quiet, will you! Oh, poor fellow, did I kick you then?----Yes, yes, I'll tell you the road directly,--its--its straight on through the wood till you come to the big water-wheel!" As this direction seemed to me to be rather vague for a road of about fourteen miles length through a forest, I asked her if I could not hire a lad who knew the road, to go with me. "No, bless you! Is it likely?" she said, as she left the piggery and came out on the slope before the farm. "They are so busy now with the hay-making, that they've scarcely time to eat. But it's straight through the wood, and I'll explain it to you right enough, as if you saw the road before you. First you go up the crag and all the hills over yonder, and when you have got up on the heights, you have the straight road right before you to Heggelie. You have the river on your left hand all the way, and if you don't see it you'll hear it. But just about Heggelie there is a lot of twistings and turnings, and now and then the road is lost altogether for some distance--if one is a stranger there, it's not an easy thing to find one's way, but you are sure to find it as far as Heggelie, for that's close to the lake. Afterwards you go along the lake, till you come to the dam across a small tarn, just like a bridge, as they call it; bear away to the left there, and then turn off to the right, and you have the road straight before you to Stubdale, in Aasa." Although this direction was not quite satisfactory, particularly as it was the first time I had started on an excursion off the main road, I set out confidently and soon all hesitation vanished. From the heights a view was now and then obtained between the lofty pine and fir trees of the valley below, with its smiling fields and variegated woods of birch and alder trees, between which the river wound like a narrow silvery streak. The red-painted farm-houses, peculiar to Norway, lay picturesquely scattered on the higher points of the undulating valley where men and women were busy hay-making. From some chimneys rose columns of blue smoke, which appeared quite light against the dark back-ground of thickly studded pine forests on the mountain slopes.