XI


An occasional tourist came or went, Solem accompanied him across the
fjeld, and he was gone. But where were all the foreigners this year?
Bennett's and Cook's conducted tours, the hordes that would "do" the
mountain peaks of Norway--where were they?

At last two solitary Englishmen turned up. They were middle-aged, unshaven
and ill-groomed altogether, two engineers or something of that sort, but
quite as speechless and uncivil as the grandest of the traveling British
clowns. "Guide! Guide!" they called. "You the guide?" Nothing about them
was any different from what we had grown to expect; these two traveled
brainlessly and solemnly to the mountain tops, were in a hurry, had a
purpose, behaved as though they were running to catch a doctor. Solem went
with them to the top and down the other side, and they offered him a
fifty-_oere_ bit. Solem held out the palm of his hand, he told me
afterwards, for he thought they would put more in it, but nothing came of
that. So he created a disturbance--Solem has grown spoiled and insolent
from all his idling with tourists.

_"Mehr,_ more," said he.

No, they would not. Solem flung the coin on the ground and struck his
hands together repeatedly. This had the required effect, and one
_krone_ made its appearance. But on Solem's taking the noble lord by
the shoulder and exerting a little pressure, two _kroner_ were at
last forthcoming.