Down at the station, loaded trucks were being wheeled about. Behind the hotel were the works, the sawmill; smothered thuds and blows were heard, and more faintly the roar of the waterfall; over everything else the shrill sound of the planks as the saw went through them. This was one of the great timber districts; the pine-trees darkened the heights as far as one could see, and that was very far, for the valley was broad and straight.
"Dear, it is nearly seven o'clock. What has become of the horses?"
"I had thought of sleeping here to-night, and not starting till to-morrow morning."
"Sleep here, mother?" She turned towards her mother with a look of surprise.
"I want very much to talk to you this evening."
The daughter recognised in her mother's eyes the same expression she had seen there at the station at Christiania: and she flushed. Then she turned back again into the room.
"Yes, suppose we take a walk." The mother came and put her arm round her neck.
Shortly after they were down by the river. It was between lights, and the softened hues of plain and ridge gave one a feeling of uncertainty.
A perfumed air was wafted from wood and meadow, and the rush of the river rose fiercely to their ears.
"It was of your father I wished to speak."
The daughter tried to stop her, but the mother went on.
"It was here I first saw him. Did you never hear his name mentioned in Christiania?"
"No." A tolerably long silence followed the "No."
"If I have never spoken of him freely, I had my reasons, Magne. You shall hear them now. For now I can tell you everything; I have not been able to do so before."
She waited for the daughter to make some rejoinder; but she made none.
The mother turned half round and pointed up towards the station, that is, towards the house which stood beside it.
"Can you see that broad roof there, to the right of the hotel? There are the assembly rooms, the library, and the rest. Your father has the credit of it; he gave all the timber. Well, it was there I first saw him, or rather from there I first saw him. I sat among the people who were going to hear him; the whole of the ground-floor is one single room with broad sloping galleries, and it is built after the American fashion; you know that your father went over there when he had finished his studies. Come, now, let us go on farther; I love this path by the riverside. I walked along it with your father just six weeks to the hour and day after I had first seen him, and by that time we were married."