'maker of runes' and the saeter woman sat whispering.

"One night, however, the wife learnt all things, but said no word.
Then, as now, the ravine in front of the enclosure was crossed by a
slight bridge of planks, and over this bridge the woman of the saeter
passed and repassed each night. On a day when Hund had gone down to
fish in the fiord, the wife took an axe, and hacked and hewed at the
bridge, yet it still looked firm and solid; and that night, as Hund
sat waiting in his workshop, there struck upon his ears a piercing
cry, and a crashing of logs and rolling rock, and then again the dull
roaring of the torrent far below.

"But the woman did not die unavenged; for that winter a man, skating
far down the fiord, noticed a curious object embedded in the ice; and
when, stooping, he looked closer, he saw two corpses, one gripping
the other by the throat, and the bodies were the bodies of Hund and
his young wife.

"Since then, they say, the woman of the saeter haunts Hund's house,
and if she sees a light within she taps upon the door, and no man may
keep her out. Many, at different times, have tried to occupy the
house, but strange tales are told of them. 'Men do not live at
Hund's saeter,' said my old grey-haired friend, concluding his tale,-
-'they die there.'

"I have persuaded some of the braver of the villagers to bring what
provisions and other necessaries we require up to a plateau about a
mile from the house and leave them there. That is the most I have
been able to do. It comes somewhat as a shock to one to find men and
women--fairly educated and intelligent as many of them are--slaves to