rage after its lost prey, and rush round the house, rattling and
shrieking at window and door.

In a lull, after one such loud gust, Rol lifted his head in
surprise and listened. A lull had also come on the babel of talk,
and thus could be heard with strange distinctness a sound outside
the door--the sound of a child's voice, a child's hands. "Open,
open; let me in!" piped the little voice from low down, lower than
the handle, and the latch rattled as though a tiptoe child reached
up to it, and soft small knocks were struck. One near the door
sprang up and opened it. "No one is here," he said. Tyr lifted his
head and gave utterance to a howl, loud, prolonged, most dismal.

Sweyn, not able to believe that his ears had deceived him, got up
and went to the door. It was a dark night; the clouds were heavy
with snow, that had fallen fitfully when the wind lulled.
Untrodden snow lay up to the porch; there was no sight nor sound
of any human being. Sweyn strained his eyes far and near, only to
see dark sky, pure snow, and a line of black fir trees on a hill
brow, bowing down before the wind. "It must have been the wind,"
he said, and closed the door.

Many faces looked scared. The sound of a child's voice had been so
distinct--and the words "Open, open; let me in!" The wind might
creak the wood, or rattle the latch, but could not speak with a
child's voice, nor knock with the soft plain blows that a plump
fist gives. And the strange unusual howl of the wolf-hound was an
omen to be feared, be the rest what it might. Strange things were
said by one and another, till the rebuke of the house-mistress
quelled them into far-off whispers. For a time after there was