AH, THERE is surely no need to believe that any supernatural influence was at work. But for one who has heard close to his ear the low-toned whispering of the beloved dead, or marked, with an unrest so great that the heart seems ready to break under it, how a soft tide of gentle thoughts comes sweeping through the soul; has felt the softest hands guiding the weary pen to its end--such an one finds it hard to believe that there were not invisible hosts this day gathered about the unfortunate man who drove along over the broad, desolate mountain tracts. For however hurt and betrayed, however deceived and humiliated he felt, however his thoughts turned toward vengeance and punishment, they were yet led again and again toward something else that seemed to draw them with even greater power. And the thing that drew them so was Hånger, the home of his fathers, that he had never seen, with its red buildings set far up among the pine-woods, looking out over a landscape with ten long ridges, ten high peaks, ten glittering lakes, ten parishes--and hardly ten homesteads in all. To him, the vision had never yet appeared--the vision of the old house at Hånger, with gatepost and orchard and cellar, as he knew it had appeared to others of his race. But over him, too, lay its secret power. And his thoughts turned now to his childhood, when he had dreamed that it should fall to his lot to lift the curse that rested on Hånger and the race of Hånger. He recalled his argument of the old days, that since the curse had come upon them through the murder of a priest, so it might be lifted from their heads if one of the Hånger folk became a priest and a holy man of God. Later, in youth and manhood, he had lost those thoughts, it is true; yet, after all, it was that original idea which had determined the direction of his life. When he had commenced his studies, and all had gone well in what he touched, he had ceased to believe that any ill-fate especially threatened the men of his race. It was all nothing but a wayward, unruly character, and a gloomy inability to keep what was their own. If a man were but wise, and knew how to control himself, the thought of suicide would surely disappear. "And I shall be the one to show them that a Rhånge from Hånger can die as others do," he had sometimes thought. "And so, after all, it may be my lot to make an end of the old superstition." And indeed he had succeeded in resisting all the temptations common to youth, and in leading an orderly and blameless life, in all save his relations with his wife.