to the formidable height of six feet four or five, she could no longer master her mirth, but burst out into a most vehement fit of laughter. He stood calm and silent, and looked at her with a timid but strangely bitter smile. He was so very different from any man she had ever seen before; therefore she laughed, not necessarily because he amused her, but because his whole person was a surprise to her; and there he stood, tall and gaunt and timid, and said not a word, only gazed and gazed. His dress was not the national costume of the valley, neither was it like anything that Aasa had ever known. On his head he wore a cap that hung all on one side, and was decorated with a long, heavy silk tassel. A threadbare coat, which seemed to be made expressly not to fit him, hung loosely on his sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons, which were narrow where they ought to have been wide, and wide where it was their duty to be narrow, extended their service to a little more than the upper half of the limb, and, by a kind of compromise with the tops of the boots, managed to protect also the lower half. His features were delicate, and would have been called handsome had they belonged to a proportionately delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy vagueness which seemed to come and vanish, and to flit from one feature to another, suggesting the idea of remoteness, and a feeling of hopeless strangeness to the world and all its concerns. “Do I inconvenience you, madam?” were the first words he uttered, as Aasa in her usual abrupt manner stayed her laughter, turned her back on him, and hastily started for the house. “Inconvenience?” said she, surprised, and again slowly turned on her heel; “no, not that I know.” “Then tell me if there are people living here in the neighborhood, or if the light deceived me, which I saw from the other side of the river.” “Follow me,” answered Aasa, and she naïvely reached him her hand; “my father’s name is Lage Ulfson Kvaerk; he lives in the large house you see straight before you, there on the hill; and my mother lives there too.” And hand in hand they walked together, where a path had been made between two adjoining rye-fields; his serious smile seemed to grow milder and happier, the longer he lingered at her side, and her eye caught a ray of more human intelligence, as it rested on him. “What do you do up here in the long winter?” asked he, after a pause. “We sing,” answered she, as it were at random, because the word came into her mind; “and what do you do, where you come from?” “I gather song.” “Have you ever heard the forest sing?” asked she, curiously. “That is why I came here.” And again they walked on in silence.