When morning had come and they relieved her at her post, she walked out to the high rocky promontory from which she could see the sea. The day was still young and the grass and bushes were covered with dewdrops. Ragna gathered a handful of flowers as she went and pressed their wet freshness to her face. She felt grave and old; the bright sunlight seemed like an insult in the fact of the long night and the silent darkened room. She seated herself on a grey lichen-covered boulder overlooking the water. The fjord was like glass, as far as the eye could reach and it reflected the surrounding mountains like a mirror; to her tired eyes it was unreal, like a pictured scene. As she sat there, a breeze sprang up and tiny ripples ruffled the surface of the water, spreading from shore to shore. The reflections of tree and crag shivered into a thousand fragments. Up the bay a boat was putting out from the little village. Ragna idly watched the rise and fall of the oars. A girl was rowing, swaying to the rhythm of the stroke; she was standing and her red bodice stood out against the background, a vivid patch of colour. She was singing and her clear voice rose in plaintive minor notes. Smoke began to rise from the village chimneys, and a dog barked. It was Life going on, taking no heed of those who fall by the wayside, Life, the cruel Wheel, crushing the weak, casting to one side those who would clog the onward march--life, the Life of the world to whom the individual existence, the individual pain and strife are of no importance; life continuing the same throughout the ages, no matter who dies, no matter who suffers. "The mountains do not change, nor the sky, no matter who comes or goes," thought Ragna, "and everything goes on just the same, no one is necessary, continuity is everything. If we suffer, if we die, what does it matter? I shall die, we shall all die, and in a few years it will make no difference to anyone; there is no real change, only people come and go. That is the real eternity--just the same old round, over and over again, and on forever." She sat a long time, her chin supported in her palms, her eyes, steel blue, gazing out steadily over the New World made manifest to her. In after years she often thought of the hours spent there by the fjord in the early morning, and the memory nearly always brought peace to her heart. Her own troubles seemed so trivial, so transient in comparison with the age old changelessness of life, her own life and destiny so unimportant in the endless chain of humanity. CHAPTER VIII