We went back to the fire, and remained sitting through the light night-time, and far on into the morning, Nilas squatting on the ground, half in the smoke of the fire, with which he mingled the smoke from his own pipe, looking, with his red head-covering, just like an imp. I sat with a veil over my face, and with paper before me, he relating and I listening, and scribbling down on the paper, as fast as my pen would go, his strange tales about a big monastery which had once stood where our tents were pitched, and about a magnificent church, and monks who used to go in procession, and sing psalms, and burn incense. If I had not found the millstone, I should most probably never have learnt the history of this monastery, but the millstone gave me the first clue, which I resolutely followed up, carefully searching through legends and manuscripts and books, among the State archives, and in libraries in Norway, Finland, and Russia. I have picked up and collected every trustworthy piece of historical and ethnographical information, and woven these together with the old legends which I heard from the Lapp Nilas that night on the banks of the Petschenga River. Before we left the neighbourhood I went once more to the millstone, to look at it somewhat more closely, and to take leave of it. It had been the upper of the two stones which are used in a mill. It lay with the hollowed part uppermost, and a quantity of dead leaves—yellow, green, and red birch leaves—had collected in the hollow. While I was sitting quite alone and dreaming of the old times, a little whirlwind arose which whisked the leaves round in a circle on the stone, and swept them into the hole, rolled them up again, and then whirled them into the air, so that they danced about, chasing one another hither and thither as if at play, just as if they had all of a sudden come to life, and had been transformed into a variety of yellow, green, and red butterflies. Are they the souls of the monks, I thought, which have come back here again, and are carrying on a sprightly dance over the solitary relic of their former glory? and is it for joy because now at last, after the lapse of three centuries, they are to be rescued from oblivion and brought to the light of day once again? If this be so, then I hope they will not be altogether displeased with my endeavour to serve them. We will now take our leave of both the sportsman and the botanist, and endeavour to recall, and to present to our readers, scenes and incidents which belong to the middle of the sixteenth century. CHAPTER II. TRIFON, THE FOUNDER OF THE MONASTERY. Not many persons are acquainted with the fact that in Finmark, far away to the North, and on the very shores of the Arctic Ocean, there once stood a large monastery, which was famed, in its day, throughout the Greek Church for its sanctity, its wealth, and its industry.