The daughter of a forester, and completely spoiled by her father, who yielded to all her whims, Raghilda was at the same time the torment and the happiness of her affianced lover. If he climbed the heights, and gathered the most beautiful mountain flowers as a tribute to her charms, that very day the fantastic beauty would be seized with a severe headache, and have quite a horror of perfumes. Did he bring her game from the forest, she "could not comprehend," she would say, "how any man could leave a pretty young girl to go and kill the poor hares." One day he procured, at great expense, an assortment of necklaces and gold rings from Europe. He expected this time, at any rate, to be recompensed for his pains; but Raghilda merely declared that she much preferred to these rich presents the heavy silver ornaments that decorate Norwegian females. But she, nevertheless, took care to adorn herself with the despised gifts, to the intense envy of the other young girls her companions. According to universal Wermeland usage, Raghilda kept bees. From morning to evening she tended her hives, and the insects knew her so well, that her presence did not scare them in the least, but they hummed and buzzed around her without testifying either fright or anger. Daniel, as our readers may imagine, never visited his mistress without busying himself among her bees. One day he took it into his head that a high wall, standing just before the hives, deprived them in part of the heat of the sun, and compelled the insects to fly too high to gain the plain, and collect their store of perfumed honey. He proposed to Raghilda to diminish the height of the offending wall by some feet. At first the young girl would not entertain the idea, merely because it came from her lover; but she at length ceded to his reasonings, and the wall was diminished in height. For several weeks Daniel and Raghilda congratulated themselves on the steps they had taken. The full heat of the sun marvelously quickened the eggs of the queen-bee, without reckoning that the journey of the little workers was shortened by one-half. But, alas! one fatal morning, when the young girl placed herself at her window to say good-day to her dear hives, she beheld them overturned, crushed, deserted. The honeycombs were broken all to pieces, and the ground was strewed with the bodies of the unfortunate insects. Upon Daniel's arrival, he found his lovely Raghilda weeping despairingly in the midst of the melancholy ruins. The latter had thought of nothing beyond the loss of her bees, her own sorrow, and, above all, of her discontent with Daniel, and his pernicious advice concerning the wall. Her lover, on the contrary, vowed vengeance against the spoiler.