Her husband would not permit the carriage to halt again. He contented himself with following his wife's example by waving one hand. The movement must have been accompanied by an admonition to sit down, for the lady disappeared forthwith. The plume in her hat waved over his shoulder. More could not be seen; she must have let herself glide back into her place. DUST. CHAPTER I. The drive from the town to Skogstad, the large gard belonging to the Atlung family, with its manufacturing establishment on the margin of the woodland stream, at the usual steady pace, might possibly occupy two hours; but in the fine sleighing we had been having it could scarcely take an hour and a half. The road was a chaussée running along the fjord. All the way from town I had the fjord on the right-hand side, and on the left broad fields, gently sloping down from the heights and dotted with villas and gards, surrounded by hedges of trees and having avenues leading to them. Farther on, the heights became mountains, and rose more abruptly from the shore; here, too, they became more and more rugged, and at last had no other growth than the pine forest, from the uppermost ridge all the way down to the fjord, forest, forest, far as the eye could reach. This belonged to Skogstad; the factory on the Skogstad River prepared the raw material. The Atlungs were of French descent, having settled here in the times of the Huguenots, and were people of plain origin who had bettered their condition by marrying into the once wealthy and influential Atlung family, taking its name, which sounded not unlike their own. I thoroughly enjoyed the drive. It had recently been snowing, and the snow still lay on the trees; not a breath of wind had left its traces in the wood. On the other hand, it had been thawing a little, which the deciduous trees that here began to press forward farther down toward the road could not tolerate; the sole covering they wore was the new-fallen snow of the morning. Between both the white landscape and the snow-laden air, the fjord appeared black. It was not far to the opposite side, and there still loftier mountains loomed up, now also white, but of that subdued tint imparted by the atmosphere. Where I was driving the sea lay close up to the edge of the snow, only a few sea-weeds, some pebbles, and in some places not so much as these, separated the two forms and hues of the same element--reality and poetry, where the poetry is just as real as the reality, simply not so enduring. As soon as I had advanced as far as the forest, this attracted my undivided attention. The fir-trees held great armfuls of snow; in some places it had been showered around; nevertheless there was still so much uncovered that a shimmer of dark green overspread the whiteness of the entire forest. On a nearer view it could be seen that the single uncovered branches were thrust forth, as it were, defiantly, and that the red-tinted lower boughs had pierced the snow-drifts.