above him,--his canopy,--gleamed with a cold yet lustrous blue,
while across it slowly flitted a few wandering clouds of palest
amber, deepening, as they sailed along, to a tawny orange. A broad
stream of light falling, as it were, from the centre of the
magnificent orb, shot lengthwise across the Altenfjord, turning its
waters to a mass of quivering and shifting color that alternated
from bronze to copper,--from copper to silver and azure. The
surrounding hills glowed with a warm, deep violet tint, flecked here
and there with touches of bright red, as though fairies were
lighting tiny bonfires on their summits. Away in the distance a huge
mass of rock stood out to view, its rugged lines transfigured into
ethereal loveliness by a misty veil of tender rose pink,--a hue
curiously suggestive of some other and smaller sun that might have
just set. Absolute silence prevailed. Not even the cry of a sea-mew
or kittiwake broke the almost deathlike stillness,--no breath of
wind stirred a ripple on the glassy water. The whole scene might
well have been the fantastic dream of some imaginative painter,
whose ambition soared beyond the limits of human skill. Yet it was
only one of those million wonderful effects of sky and sea which are
common in Norway, especially on the Altenfjord, where, though beyond
the Arctic circle, the climate in summer is that of another Italy,
and the landscape a living poem fairer than the visions of Endymion.

There was one solitary watcher of the splendid spectacle. This was a
man of refined features and aristocratic appearance, who, reclining
on a large rug of skins which he had thrown down on the shore for
that purpose, was gazing at the pageant of the midnight sun and all
its stately surroundings, with an earnest and rapt expression in his
clear hazel eyes.