But when Torarin heard these words he thought they meant that Herr Arne charged him to contend with malefactors and murderers, and he cried out: "By the mercy of God I conjure you, Herr Arne--" At that moment it seemed to Torarin that both Herr Arne and the parsonage vanished in a mist, and he himself sank down as though he had fallen from a giddy height, and with that he lost consciousness. When he came to himself again dawn was breaking and he saw that he was lying on the ground in the yard of Solberga parsonage. His horse stood beside him with the sledge, and Grim barked and howled over him. "It was all but a dream," said Torarin; "now I see that. The house is deserted and in ruin. I have seen neither Herr Arne nor any other. But I was so startled by the dream that I fell off the load." CHAPTER IV IN THE MOONLIGHT When Herr Arne had been dead a fortnight there came some nights of clear, bright moonlight, and one evening Torarin was out with his sledge. He checked his horse time after time, as though he had difficulty in finding the way. Yet he was not driving through any trackless forest, but upon what looked like a wide and open plain, above which rose a number of rocky knolls. The whole tract was covered with glittering white snow. It had fallen in calm weather and lay evenly, not in drifts and eddies. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but the same even plain and the same rocky knolls. "Grim, my dog," said Torarin, "if we saw this tonight for the first time we should think we were driving over a great heath. But still we should wonder that the ground was so even and the road free from stones and ruts. What sort of tract can this be, we should say, where there are neither ditches nor fences, and how comes it that no grass or bushes stick up through the snow? And why do we see no rivers and streams, which elsewhere are wont to draw their black furrows through the white fields even in the hardest frost?" Torarin was delighted with these fancies, and Grim too found pleasure in them. He did not move from his place on the load, but lay still and blinked. But just as Torarin had finished speaking he drove past a lofty pole to which a broom was fastened. "If we were strangers here, Grim, my dog," said Torarin, "we might well ask ourselves what sort of heath this was, where they set up such marks as we use at sea. 'This can never be the sea itself?' we should say at last. But we should think it utterly impossible. This that lies so firm and fast, can this be only water? And all the rocky knolls that we see so firmly united, can they be only holms and skerries parted by the rolling waves? No, we should never believe it was possible, Grim, my dog." Torarin laughed and Grim still lay quiet and did not stir. Torarin drove on, until he rounded a high knoll. Then he gave a cry as though he had seen something strange. He put on an air of great surprise, dropped the reins and clapped his hands.