“These learned chaps are not to be trusted, child,” he went on, in a tone of serious remonstrance.  “It isn’t safe to have one of them fellows running about loose.  I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby.  He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks.  And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm.  Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched.  There was no luck in anything.  I tell you, my lass, the Almighty doesn’t like to have anybody peeping into His hand, and telling Him when to trump and when to throw a low card.  That is the long and short of it.  If we don’t ship this fellow, smooth-faced and nice as he may be, we shall have a run of bad luck here, such as you never saw the like of before.”

In the meanwhile, Maurice, not wishing to overhear the conversation, had entered the house, and father and daughter were left to continue their parley in private.  There was really, as Elsie thought, some plausibility in the old man’s prognostications, and the situation began to assume a very puzzling aspect to her mind.  She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the rule.  She felt confident that so good a man as he could never have tried to pry into the secrets of God Almighty.  Tharald yielded grumblingly, inch by inch, and thus saved his dignity, although his daughter, in the end, prevailed.  She obtained his permission to request the guest to remain, and not interpret too literally the rather hasty words he had used.  Thus a compromise was effected.  Fern suspended his packing, and resumed his objectionable attitude toward the mysteries of creation.

About a week after this occurrence, Maurice was walking along the beach, watching some peasant lads who were spearing trout in a brook near by.  The sun had just dipped below the western mountain peaks, and a cool, bluish twilight, which seemed the essence of atmospheric purity, purged of all accessory effects, filled the broad, placid valley, and made it a luxury to breathe.  The torches of the fishermen flitted back and forth between the slender stems of the birches, and now and then sent up a great glare of light among the foliage, which shone with a ghostly grayish green.  The majestic repose of this scene sank deeply into Fern’s mind; dim yearnings awoke in him, and a strange sense of kinship with these mountains, fjords, and glaciers rose from some unknown depth of his soul.  He seemed suddenly to love them.  Whenever he thought of Norway in later years, the impression of this night revived within him.  After a long ramble over the sand, he chanced upon a low, turf-thatched cottage lying quite apart from the inhabited districts of the valley.  The sheen of the fire upon the hearth-stone fell through the open door and out upon the white beach, and illuminated faintly the middle portion of a long fishing-net, which was suspended on stakes, for drying.  Feeling a little tired, he seated himself on a log near the door, and gazed out upon the gleaming glaciers in the distance.