“That’s what comes of falling in love, Neighbor Niels. Poor Guth Stersen would not be stretched out yonder on that great black slab, like a starfish forgotten by the tide, if she had kept her mind on mending her father’s boat and patching his nets. Saint Usuph, the fisher, console our old friend in his affliction!” “And her lover,” added a shrill, tremulous voice, “Gill Stadt, that fine young man beside her, would not be there now, if instead of making love to Guth and seeking his luck in those accursed Roeraas mines, he had stayed at home and rocked his little brother’s cradle, under the smoky cross-beams of his mother’s hut.” Neighbor Niels, whom the first speaker addressed, interrupted: “Your memory is growing old along with yourself, Mother Olly. Gill never had a brother, and that makes poor Widow Stadt’s grief all the harder to bear, for her home is now left utterly desolate; if she looks up to heaven for consolation, she sees nought but her old roof, where still hangs the cradle of her son, grown to be a tall young man, and dead.” “Poor mother!” replied old Olly, “it was the young man’s own fault. Why should he go to Roeraas to be a miner?” “I do believe,” said Niels, “that those infernal mines rob us of a man for every escalin’s[3] worth of copper which we get out of them. What do you think, Father Braal?” “Miners are fools,” replied the fisherman. “If he would live, the fish should not leave the water. Man should not enter the bowels of the earth.” “But,” asked a young man in the crowd, “how if Gill Stadt had to work in the mines to win his sweetheart?” “A man should never risk his life,” interrupted Olly, “for affections which are far from being worth a life, or filling it. A pretty wedding-bed Gill earned for his Guth!” “So then that young woman,” inquired a curious bystander, “drowned herself in despair at the death of this young man?” “Who says so?” loudly exclaimed a soldier, pushing his way through the crowd. “That young girl, whom I knew well, was indeed engaged to marry a young miner who was lately crushed by falling rocks in the underground tunnels of Storwaadsgrube, near Roeraas; but she was also the sweetheart of one of my mates, and as she was going to Munkholm secretly, day before yesterday, to celebrate with her lover the death of her betrothed, her boat capsized on a reef, and she was drowned.” A confused sound of voices arose: “Impossible, master soldier,” cried the old women. The young ones were silent; and Neighbor Niels maliciously reminded fisher Braal of his serious statement: “That’s what comes of falling in love!” The soldier was about to lose his temper with his opponents; he had already called them “old witches from the cave of Quiragoth,” and they were not disposed to bear so grave an insult patiently, when a sharp and imperious voice, crying “Silence, silence, you old fools!” put an end to the dispute. All was still, as when the sudden crow of a cock is heard amid the cackling of the hens.