The same day an enormous dinner was given in honour of Mr. Stevenson; it was a public one, and the tickets were high-I think as much as a sovereign in English. Nevertheless, it was well attended. I went to the gallery, where some ladies were engaged in watching the operations carried on below. I looked on as long as I could at dishes handing, and knives, forks, and glasses moving, and then I went away in company with an agreeable young Norse lad, who had been wiling away the time by telling me a legend of his country, while others were trying to eat something like the worth of their money. I wanted to hear the end of it, but he wanted to return to the scene of the dinner. "I must hear the end," I said.

"I will tell it when I see you again," was his reply.

"But that may not be for fifty years. I am going away."

"Well, in fifty years I will tell it. I promise that."

"I shall be dead before then."

"Well, no matter."

"What! do you mean that I should come to

you some time-in your

old age,

it would be and

demand the fulfilment of your promise? Think

of having to rise up in your bed, at some midnight hour, to conclude an unfinished legend to a mysterious visitant."

"Oh!" said the Norwegian youth, quickly, "I did not mean to promise that. No, no! I only mean that I will finish it in fifty years-if you live so long."

198

CHAPTER XVI.

LAST night I said, "Thank God I am on land!" to-day I scarcely know whether I am on land or water. I know only that I am in misery.

Listen to my story, kind creatures at home, for wide as is the space between us, I feel as if I were obtaining your sympathy while pouring out my griefs on paper.

From Christiania, where I had seen the sun eclipsed and the first sod of the railway turned, I went to Drammen; saw a grand view from a tremendous hill on the way thither, a splendid river; romantic scenery around a neat wooden town, and twenty-six houses burned

down, in what the Irish people would call "less than no time." Guns were firing, drums beating, National Guards marching, and the Fire-king laughing at all; when, finding it impossible to get on by land, as every horse, even of passers-by, was pressed into service against his majesty, being taken to draw the water-carts-I thought it more desirable to get away by means of the steam-boat, on the beautiful Drammen Fiord, and river of that name.

I passed through a most lovely scene to Frederickstadt, where I met the carriage of Mr. Pelly, the proprietor of the great Sarpsborg works, and of the pleasant estate of Borregaard.

The hospitable owners of that agreeable mansion were absent in England; but the house was left open to the occupancy of such a wandering waif as myself. Kind Mr. Simpson received me, and showed me all the manufactures of that little colony, a manufacturing town in itself, built on the magnificent and once solitary Sarpsborg Falls, or, in the language of the land, Sarp-fos.

This Schaffhausen of Norway must needs be beautiful in itself, for it borrows no aid from the charms of nature around it, and is wonderfully encumbered with the deformities of art. It supports a whole town of manufactories, and the deaf

ening clang of all sorts of machinery mingle with the roar of its mighty flood. There is an iron foundry to make on the spot the machinery used; all sorts of tools and implements are made here; there are saw mills and flour mills; places dark, noisy, and fearful to walk through, where I shuddered to feel a plank between my feet and the torrent.

The form and direction of these torrents have been much altered by a singular and melancholy landslip which occurred here a hundred and fifty years ago. The old mansion of Borregaard stood on the elevated bank of the Glommen, and was occupied by the proprietor of the estate, which has since been purchased by Sir Henry Pelly, and the modern mansion of which was occupied by Mr. E. Pelly, during my peaceful visit to Borregaard. This old mansion, which was very strong, with high towers and double walls, suddenly sunk into the torrent, when every soul within it had quietly retired to their nightly rest, with the exception of one servant girl, who had been detained out, and, on returning home at eleven o'clock, on a winter's night, beheld a strange vision before her;-the ground, the house, and all that inhabited it, disappeared in a moment from her eyes-thundered