In the days of King Oscar I, the mountain was not green. On the
contrary, it was grey and cold, for neither moss nor heart's-ease
would grow there, although these plants generally thrive on the
bare rock. There was nothing but grey stone and grey people, who
looked as if they had been turned into stone, and who quarried
stone, broke stone, and carried stone. And among these people there
was one who looked stonier than all the others.

He was still a youth when, in the reign of King Oscar I., he was
shut up in this prison because he had killed a man.

He was a prisoner for life, and sewn on his grey prison garb was
a large black "L."

He was always on the mountain, in winter days and summer time,
breaking stones. In the winter he had only the empty and deserted
harbour to look at; the semicircular bridge with its poles had the
appearance of a yawning row of teeth, and he could see the wood-shed,
the riding-school, and the two gigantic, denuded lime trees.
Sometimes an ice-yacht would sail past the islet; sometimes a few
boys would pass on skates; otherwise it was quiet and forsaken.

In the summer time it was much jollier. For then the harbour was
full of smart boats, newly painted and decorated with flags. And the
lime trees, in the shade of which he had sat when he was a child,
waiting for his father, who was an engineer on one of the finest
boats, were green.

It was many years now since he had heard the rustling of the breeze
in the trees, for nothing grew on his cliff, and the only thing in