288 A Summer Night in a Norwegian Forxst. began cutting away till the splinters flew about him in all directions, but it grew darker and darker ; there was stilt a small pine left, which he was determined to have down, but no sooner bad he given it the first cut, than the axe head flew off the handle. He set about looking for it and found it at last in a hollow. But suddenly he thought he heard some one calling him by nåme ; he could not make out who it could be, for Helge Myra could not have any business thereabouts, and no one else lived there for miles around. He listened again, but did not hear anything, so he thought he might have been mistaken. He began cutting again, but all at once the axe-head flew off the handle again. He found it this time also after a long search, but when he was going to cut the tree on the north side of its stem, he heard plainly a voice shouting in the mountain : " ' Halvor, Halvor ! Early you come and late you go,' ' butas soon as I heard that/ said my father, ' I felt as if I had lost the use of my legs and I could scarcely get the axe out of the stem of the pine tree, but when I did take to my legs I didn't stop until I came to Helge's cottage.' " " Yes, I have heard that story before," said old Thor, "but that wasn't the one I meant ; it was about the time he was at the wedding at the dairy on Kile hill." Oh, that time ! " answered the indefatigable lad ; " that was in the spring, just before Easter 1815, when father lived at Oppen- Eie—the snow wasn't gone yet, but he had to set out for the forest to cut and drag home some wood. He went up in the Helling hill, where he found a withered fir, which he commenced cutting down at once. While cutting away at it, he thought he saw withered firs all around him, but while he was staring and wondering at this, up came a procession of eleven horses, — all of a mouse-grey colour ; it appeared to him to be a wedding-party. "What people are these, who are coming this way over the hill?"heasked. "Oh, wc are from Osthalla," says one of them, "wc are going to the Veien dairy to keep the wedding ; the one who drives in front is the parson, next are the bride and bridegroom, and I am
