not been cleaned since sometime during winter, and we were not
ambitious enough for such an undertaking in the middle of the
summer.

We tried to transfer our thoughts from the store to the world
outside. We made clever comments to the effect that the farmers were
now getting plenty of moisture for the hay-fields, and that it would
be a pity if rain should set in now, right at the beginning of the
haying season. We had nothing further to say on the subject, but
this we repeated from day to day. In short, we were depressed and at
odds with things in general. Until the dry spell.

One morning, about nine o'clock, the bank of fog began to move.
First, there appeared an opening about the size of your hand, and
through it the eastern sky showed a bright blue. Then another
opening, and through it shone the sun.

We knew what this was called, and we said to each other: Merely a
'morning promise'--implying, nothing reliable. But it was more. The
fog began to show thinner and move faster along the mountain ridge
opposite. Then it gathered in a deep pass and lay there heaped up
like newly carded, snowy wool. On either side, the mountains loomed
a lovely blue, and in their triumph ignored the fog almost
completely. When we ventured a look through the doorway of the
store, there was nothing to be seen overhead save the clear, blue
sky and the sunshine.

On the opposite shore of the fjord, the people looked to us like the
cairns out on the moorlands, only these tiny cairns moved in single
file about the hay-fields. I seemed to smell the sweet hay in the