But they who now sat there singing or listening only had not been born and nurtured by glad songs and the wide sea alone; no, they were children of the mountains too; children of them as well as of the songs and sea. Just before the song began they had been engaged in a discussion as sharp and cutting, as leaden-hued as any mountain. It was to do away with this stone-like sharpness among themselves that they had sent forth their melodious song, building long bridges of glorious harmony across the mountain-peaks and precipices. The summer day was slightly gray in itself; but occasionally (just as at that moment!) the sun shone forth over song and sail and landscape. There sat two on whom both sun and song were wasted. Look at him down there, a little to the right, lying in the grass, leaning on his elbow; a tall young fellow in light summer clothes and without hat, a round closely-cropped head, short, broad forehead that looked like butting, a forehead that in his boyish days must have given many a hard bang! Below the forehead was a nose like a beak, and sharp eyes that just then were slightly squinting; either the spectacles concealed it so as to make it hardly visible, or else it really was only very slight. The whole face had something severe about it, the mouth was pinched and hard and the chin sharp. But when one looked more closely into it the impression it gave one changed entirely; all that was so sharply cut became energetic rather than severe, and the spirit which had taken up its abode in this mountainous country could doubtless be both a friendly and a mischievous one. Even then, as he sat there in a towering rage, not caring a hang about either sunshine or song, he would rather have had a fight--even then gleams of merriment shot out from under the angry brows. It was clear that he was the conqueror. If anyone doubted it they need only cast an eye over to the other side of the group on him who sat up against a tree to the left, a little higher up the bank. He was the picture of a wounded warrior, suffering, and with all the trembling uneasiness of battle still in his features. It was a long fair face, not a west country face, but belonging rather to the mountain districts or highlands; either he was a foreigner, or else he came of a race of immigrants; he was strikingly like the popular pictures of Melanchthon, though perhaps the eyes were a little more dreamy and the eyebrows a little more arched; altogether the likeness, particularly the forehead, position of the eyes, and the mouth, was so striking that among his fellow-students he always went by the name of Melanchthon. This was Ole Tuft, student in theology, his studies nearly completed; and the other one, the conqueror with the eagle's beak (which just now had been hacking so sharply), was the friend of his childhood, Edward Kallem, medical student.