quays, with folk busy gutting and salting fish; there lay the
church and churchyard, the market and town hall, and there stood
many a lofty tree and waved its green branches in summer time.

But upon that half of Marstrand island which looked westward to
the sea, unguarded by isles or skerries, there was nothing but
bare and barren rocks and ragged headlands thrust out into the
waves. Heather there was in brown tufts and prickly thorn bushes,
holes of the otter and the fox, but never a path, never a house or
any sign of man.

Torarin's cabin stood high up on the ridge of the island, so that
it had the town on one side and the wilderness on the other. And
when Elsalill opened her door she came out upon broad, naked slabs
of rock, from which she had a wide view to the westward, even to
the dark horizon of the open sea.

All the seamen and fishermen who lay icebound at Marstrand used to
pass Torarin's cabin to climb the rocks and look for any sign of
the ice parting in the coves and sounds.

Elsalill stood many a time at the cottage door and followed with
her eyes the men who mounted the ridge. She was sick at heart from
the great sorrow that had befallen her, and she said to herself:
"I think everyone is happy who has something to look for. But I
have nothing in the wide world on which to fix my hopes."

One evening Elsalill saw a tall man, who wore a broad-brimmed hat
with a great feather, standing upon the rocks and gazing westward
over the sea like all the others.