"None whatever. We are quite off the usual route; nightfall is approaching, and there is but one way of escape from death--if the Signor will permit me to take him on my shoulders." "Impossible! You could not bear such a burden a single rod." "The Signor does not know the young men of Dalerna." "Nay, I will not suffer you to make the trial. Go, my good Olaf, and leave me to my fate. It is not needful that both of us should perish. Take my watch to my wife, and with it, present her with my parting salutations. My purse I give to you; by its means you can marry some blue-eyed maiden, and tell her Fortune had a smile for her when it played such a freak on me." The young man colored with indignation. "You do not know our muscles, stranger; neither do you comprehend our scorn for money won by cowardice," he said coldly. And, without another word, he proceeded to burden himself with the disabled traveler, who, after making a feeble resistance, yielded himself to his fate. This scene occurred on the frozen surface of the Gulf of Bothnia. A party of Italians, weary of their own luxurious clime, had come to these northern regions in hope of stirring their blood by adventures and perils. Several ladies of the party remained at Upsala in tolerable comfort, while their husbands and brothers, expecting to find the gulf a smooth and glassy expanse, hastened to cross it in sledges in pursuit of a new sensation. With great difficulty they procured sledges and horses with their drivers, from the country about Grisselhamn, a little town whence they proposed to set out on the expedition. It was also necessary to provide themselves with huge coats of bearskin, before encountering the cutting blasts to which these foreigners were unaccustomed.