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Ethics for the
Very Young
The Big Ideas for Young Thinkers Book Series brings together the results of
recent research about precollege philosophy. There has been sizable growth in
philosophy programs for young people. The book series provides readers with a
way to learn about all that is taking place in this important area of philosophical
and educational practice. It brings together work from around the globe by some
of the foremost practitioners of philosophy for children. The books in the series
include single-author works as well as essay collections. With a premium placed
on accessibility, the book series allows readers to discover the exciting world of
precollege philosophy.

Series Editor: Thomas Wartenberg

 Ethics for the
Very Young
A Philosophy Curriculum for
Early Childhood Education

Erik Kenyon, Diane Terorde-Doyle, and

Sharon Carnahan

Foreword by
Thomas Wartenberg

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2019 by Erik Kenyon, Diane Terorde-Doyle, and Sharon Carnahan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available

ISBN 978-1-4758-4810-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4758-4811-3 (pbk: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4758-4812-0 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 Contents

Foreword   vii
Thomas Wartenberg

PART I: INTEGRATING PHILOSOPHY INTO EARLY

EDUCATION   1
1 Origin of the Project and Acknowledgments   3
2 A Case for Integrating Philosophy into Early Education   9
The Challenge: Education for the Twenty-First Century   9
A Philosopher’s View of Early Education   10
A Developmental Psychologist’s View of Pre-K Philosophy   13
3 Theory into Practice: Bringing Philosophy into Early Education   17
The Philosophy Rules   18
Framing Questions and Philosophical Puzzles   21
Thinking with Our Bodies   25
How to Use This Book   27

PART II: TEACHING ANCIENT ETHICS   33

4 Lesson 1: Character   37
5 Lesson 2: Bravery   53
6 Lesson 3: Moderation and Self-Control   65
7 Lesson 4: Friendship   81

v
vi Contents

PART III: TEACHING MODERN ETHICS   95

8 Lesson 5: Pleasure and the Greater Good   99
9 Lesson 6: Rules and Respect   113
10 Lesson 7: Care   131

Postscript: Education as Growth   141

Appendix: Overview of Lessons and Alternative Storybooks   145
Bibliography   157
About the Authors   161
 Foreword

Teaching philosophy to children as young as four years old! If that sounds

preposterous to you, you have another thing coming. In Ethics for the Very
Young, Erik Kenyon, Diane Terorde-Doyle, and Sharon Carnahan demon-
strate not only that children as young as four can engage in philosophical
discussions of ethical issues but also that such discussions provide a very
important and largely overlooked opportunity for educators.
This is because very young children who discuss ethical questions with
their peers and teachers begin to develop an understanding of the significance
of ethical issues that they would usually only acquire much later in their lives.
The authors argue for the importance of helping children understand ethical
issues, pointing out that children are confronted by ethical issues all the time.
What they lack, and what ethical discussions in their classrooms can provide,
is the ability to discuss important issues with their peers in an open manner
that allows for the possibility of disagreement.
A unique feature of Ethics for the Very Young is the collaboration of its
authors. They are a philosophy professor, a preschool director, and a psych-
ology professor. Fusing their different approaches and experiences, Kenyon,
Terorde-Doyle, and Carnahan present a model for introducing ethical inquiry
into preschool classrooms that is easily adopted by early childhood educators.
Bringing with them knowledge of both philosophy and developmental psych-
ology, they are able to incorporate both into their model for engaging young
children in discussions of deep and important questions. I fully expect this
book to initiate dramatic changes in preschool classrooms.
The first part of Ethics for the Very Young explains the model the authors
have developed for ethical inquiry in preschool classrooms. They explain
what a teacher needs to do to include ethics discussions in his or her

vii
viii Foreword

classroom. As part of this, they also provide a convincing rationale for why
this is important.
One of the central innovations made by the authors of Ethics for the Very
Young is to allow children to, as they put it, think with their bodies. A barrier
to including ethical discussions in preschool has been the short attention span
of these young children and the challenges this poses for holding abstract
discussions. This has meant that one couldn’t just take materials developed
for elementary schools and use them with younger students.
So, in their preschool classrooms, the authors have instituted a series of
games as precursors to philosophical discussions. If they are going to dis-
cuss the nature of self-control, for example, they start off by having children
mix paints, thereby giving them the experience of “losing control” by put-
ting in too much of one color. This primes them for listening to a story and
discussing the value of moderation.
Such innovative thinking is evident throughout the lesson plans presented
in the second and third parts of Ethics for the Very Young. This portion of the
book contains lesson plans that early childhood educators can use in their
classrooms. These innovative lesson plans use games, dialogical reading, and
art projects to encourage young pupils to engage in discussions of ethical big
ideas, such as the importance of cooperation and what makes something just
or fair.
There are two series of lessons—one based on ancient Greek ethics and
one on modern ethics. The former lesson plans emphasize questions of
what makes a moral character, while the latter ones focus more centrally on
questions of right and wrong. This reflects a shift in ethics itself.
Whereas the Greeks were more concerned with figuring out what sort of
character was the best one for people to have, modern ethical theorists, such
as Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, focus on the question of what makes
an action moral or immoral. As a result, they propose different principles of
morality.
Despite this austere background, ethical issues are ones that even young
children encounter in their lives. If one student gets a treat that others don’t,
is that fair? What if that student has won a contest? Does that change things?
What justifies the answers you have given to these questions? Such issues are
precisely ones that you will learn how to get your students to discuss from the
lesson plans included in this book.
In sum, Ethics for the Very Young is a great resource for early childhood
educators. You will learn how to bring ethical discourse into their classrooms
in a way that their students will thoroughly enjoy. Parents, too, can learn
how to make their conversations with their children deeper and more sig-
nificant. Finally, anyone interested in the potential for introducing ethical
 Foreword ix

conversations into their interactions with young children will find that this
book provides them with exciting ideas for doing so.
Ethics for the Very Young brings together ideas from the great philosophers
of the past two and a half millennia with best practices from early childhood
education to produce an exciting array of ideas for innovating in preschool
and elementary school classrooms. It is a gem.

Thomas Wartenberg
 Part I

INTEGRATING PHILOSOPHY INTO

EARLY EDUCATION
 Chapter 1

Origin of the Project

and Acknowledgments

This book sets out a method and curriculum for guiding children as young as
four years old in discussions of ethics. It fuses best practices in early educa-
tion and philosophy for children (P4C), and it grounds them in current devel-
opmental psychology. It is child centered, starting from questions arising in
the daily lives of the young: What is bravery? What is a friend? What makes
something fair? These questions are posed through picture books (from P4C
practice), art projects (from Reggio Emilia), and games (promoting self-
regulation skills). Through scaffolded discussions, children come to expand
their working vocabulary for ethical concepts.
Just as importantly, children develop their ability to enter into useful
discussions of difficult questions. Such discussions, we have found, have a
profound impact on how children interact with each other and how teachers
listen and respond to children’s ideas. In short, Ethics for the Very Young aims
at nothing short of a culture shift in early education practice. It provides an
example of innovative pedagogy for future teachers, a means of professional
development (particularly via book clubs) for early educators already in the
field, and a textbook for high school or college instructors looking to teach
ethical theory via a service-learning model.
The lessons contained here are the product of extensive
collaborations: between Rollins College and six Orlando schools,
undergraduates and children, philosophers and early educators. This experi-
ential and experimental approach to learning reflects the same commitment
to progressive education and the pragmatic liberal arts that produced the
college’s most famous alumnus, Fred Rogers (class of 1951). Rollins’s
long-standing role in the progressive movement provides the deep history of
this book.

3
4 Chapter 1

Rollins College was founded in 1885 by the Congregational Church with

the aim of preparing youth for a “virtuous, happy and useful life.” Rollins’s
first students pursued this goal through a rigid course of lectures, quizzes, and
recitations from memory of mostly Greek and Latin texts. All this changed
with the appointment of Hamilton Holt: journalist, political activist, and
president of the college from 1925 to 1949. Holt aligned with figures like
John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Maria Montessori. Where these reformers
focused on primary and secondary schools, Holt saw the promise of their
learner-centered ideas for college education.
In 1931, Holt invited leading educators to campus, Dewey among them,
for a conference on reforming college curricula around progressive ideals.
Putting theory into practice, Holt replaced lecture halls with large seminar
tables, formulated a conference plan with two-hour blocks for informal col-
laboration between students and faculty, and instituted a curriculum that
would be called today a self-designed major and self-designed general edu-
cation. It was this curriculum that allowed Fred Rogers to follow his own
passions as an undergraduate. His groundbreaking work with young children
can be seen as growing out of its ethos.
Ethics for the Very Young, like Fred Rogers’s initiatives, builds on Rollins’s
deep history, representing a fusion of the founders’ goal of preparing virtuous,
happy, and useful students with Holt’s innovative forays into experiential
learning. Rollins’s curriculum has changed four times since Holt’s day, but
his commitments to innovation, experimentation, and experiential, student-
centered learning are written into the college’s DNA. We see this today in two
of Rollins’s most forward-looking centers.
Rollins’s Child Development and Student Research Center (CDC) was
founded in 1975 as part of the Psychology Department. It blends elements
of Dewey’s Lab School at Chicago and the art-based curriculum of Reggio
Emilia. In 2017, the CDC moved into a new home, Hume House, where a
staff of six teachers now serves forty-two students, ages two to five, regu-
larly collaborating with undergraduate classes from eight departments as
far-flung as physics and German. The Center for Leadership and Community
Engagement, meanwhile, coordinated thirty courses designated as Community
Engagement in 2017–2018 for an undergraduate population of 2,600.
The prompt for the present project was the launching of yet another
curriculum, the college’s seventh, which is organized around thematic
“neighborhoods” (with a nod to Fred Rogers). Gloria Cook—professor of
music, close friend of Fred and Joanne Rogers, and mayor of the Innovate,
Create, Elevate neighborhood—pushed a visiting professor of philosophy
and classics, Erik Kenyon, to design a community engagement course for the
new curriculum. The connection between his work in ancient philosophy and
 Origin of the Project and Acknowledgments 5

the immediate needs of the surrounding community were not immediately

apparent.
Working with the Community Engagement Office, Kenyon came to
realize that the world stands in dire need of something ancient philosophy
has to offer: the art of asking questions and engaging in useful dialogue. As
standardized testing has come to dominate K–12 education, a kind of rote
learning has snuck back into American schools. Within the context of the
echo chambers created by electronic media, such a development makes the
breakdown of civic discourse seem almost inevitable. Our project sets out
to address this distinctly twenty-first-century problem by drawing resources
from the last twenty-four centuries of Western thought.
The first of these community engagement courses, Socrates and the Art of
Living (spring 2015), worked with fifth- and sixth-grade gifted students at
Fern Creek Elementary School in Orlando, Florida. Rollins undergraduates,
all in their second semester, puzzled their way through Plato’s Socratic
dialogues and, following the model laid out in Tom Wartenberg’s Big Ideas
for Little Kids, designed lessons to engage children in discussion of philo-
sophical ideas using picture books.
Midway through the project, scheduling problems forced the middle school
to miss two weeks of lessons. Lisa Ryan Musgrave, professor of philosophy
and mother of two CDC students, suggested reaching out to Rollins’s own lab
school. When asked about an impromptu collaboration, Diane Terorde-Doyle,
who was then head teacher, replied, “Why not!” So students took a set of
lessons designed for fifth- and sixth-grade gifted students and used them with
three- and four-year-olds. While the first lesson was more or less a disaster,
enough progress had been made by the fourth that we decided to return to the
project in a more intentional way.
The next fall, Kenyon taught Philosophy for Kids as a Rollins College con-
ference course (a first-year seminar program and current incarnation of Holt’s
conference plan). Students worked closely with Doyle to create lessons that
were developmentally appropriate for pre-K children. Through much trial and
even more error, we distilled and adapted Wartenberg’s methods into a new
approach that revolves around three philosophy rules (we listen, we think,
we respond) and a lesson pattern that brings together games, storybooks, and
art projects.
The following term, spring 2016, we put our approach to the test as
a new class, Virtue in Civic Education, partnered with a local volun-
teer prekindergarten, Winter Park Day Nursery, to see how well methods
developed through a college lab school would work in a more typical pre-
school (Kenyon and Doyle 2017a).
Along the way, Rollins students have worked with first- to sixth-graders
at Walden Community School, Winter Park, an independent school in the
6 Chapter 1

progressive tradition. Starting in 2017, the program extended into Rollins’s

evening program, named for Hamilton Holt, through a collaboration with the
after-school program of St. Margaret Mary’s Catholic School, Winter Park. In
the process, we found ourselves generating a lot of lesson plans. The present
volume takes the most successful of them, generated by students working
closely with Kenyon and Terorde-Doyle, and shapes them into a coherent
curriculum.
When the CDC moved into Hume House in 2017, Terorde-Doyle took
on a new role as director. At the same time, Sharon Carnahan, professor of
psychology and executive director of the Hume House CDC, joined the pro-
ject, adding her voice to the interdisciplinary dialogue and overseeing an ini-
tial test drive of the curriculum in spring 2017, as a group of undergraduate
interns ran lesson plans at the Hume House CDC as fast as Kenyon could
write them.
Beyond Rollins, Gary Matthews provides the last thread binding this pro-
ject together. While it was Matthew Lippman who started the P4C movement
in 1970, Matthews advanced the cause through his work with children in the
United States and abroad and through a busy publication program including
Philosophy and Young Children (1982), Dialogues with Children (1984),
and The Philosophy of Childhood (1998). As a professor of philosophy at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Matthews acted as a friend and
mentor to Tom Wartenberg as he set up his own P4C program at the nearby
Mount Holyoke College.
Matthews was equally influential in the field of ancient and medieval
philosophy. He coorganized an annual Augustine reading group, which in
2003 brought him into contact with Erik Kenyon, then a master’s student at
the University of Vermont (Dewey’s alma mater). Matthews passed away in
2011, but the communities he built live on.
In spring 2016, Wartenberg visited Rollins to give a public talk and help
guide the nascent P4C program. He remains an active adviser, collaborator,
and editor of this series. As president of PLATO, the Philosophy Learning
And Teaching Organization, he is currently working with Rollins’s faculty to
bring that group’s biennial meeting to Winter Park in June 2019.
In short, the progressive movement is alive and well at Rollins today. In
the spirit of collaboration, experimentation, and engaged learning, this project
has involved six schools, dozens of teachers, over 140 undergraduates, and
several hundred children and their caregivers.
Special thanks goes to Caitlin Strickland and Meredith Sanchez from
the Hume House CDC’s teaching staff; Rollins alumni Alex Earl (class of
2014) and Mollie Jones (class of 2015), who have spread the project by inte-
grating P4C into their own teaching careers; and undergraduate interns Aleya
 Origin of the Project and Acknowledgments 7

Barnes, Bryan Bailey, Neeraj Chatlani, Edwin Davis, Juan Diego Medrano,
Jacob Riegler, Daniella Sykes, Lily Tawam, and Rachel Wasserman.
Lexi Tomkunas stands out among this group of outstanding
undergraduates: In addition to serving as SGA president, she has integrated
P4C into an after-school program at Fern Creek Elementary and organized
a group of her peers to work as interns with Wellbourne Day Nursery, a
second voluntary prekindergarten in Winter Park, as part of her senior thesis,
advised by Sharon Carnahan, assessing the effectiveness of the curriculum
that follows. The energy and loyalty that she and her classmates have brought
to the program has been simply contagious.
We are equally grateful for our faculty colleagues. In her work on American
pragmatism and the progressive movement, Lisa Ryan Musgrave is carving
out a theoretical space for the P4C movement within the philosophy of edu-
cation. Hoyt Edge, professor emeritus of philosophy, connected us with the
Walden School, where he serves as a board member and has taken an active
role in leading lessons. And Debra Wellman, professor of education, has
developed community engagement courses on teaching philosophy through
storybooks.
Marissa Corrente, Meredith Hein, and Micki Meyer of the Center for
Leadership and Community Engagement have been a huge help over
the years in both framing and developing the project. We have also been
blessed to have great relationships with teachers and administrators at our
neighboring schools.
Finally, and most importantly, our thanks go to all the children who have
participated in this project for their insights, their honesty, and the wonderful
vitality they have shared with us.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 "No, probably not," she answered gravely. "But go and pretend.
There's no harm in that."
"All the same," he said a little eagerly, "it is curious how much
brighter and happier I do feel since we came here. It's the getting
back to you, Knutty. That is what it is."
"Yes, I can quite believe that," replied Knutty. "There now. They
are starting off."
But he still lingered in the porch.
"What sort of nonsense have you been telling Miss Frensham
about my researches?" he said, smiling shyly.
"Oh," said Knutty, "I only told her you were engaged on some
ridiculous stereo-something investigations. I didn't think it was
anything against your moral character."
He still lingered.
"Do you know," he said, "I've been thinking that I shall enlarge
my laboratory when I get back. I believe I am going to do a lot of
good new work, Knutty."
"I shouldn't wonder," she answered. "A man isn't done for at
forty-three."
"No, that's just it," he said brightly. "Well, goodbye for the
present."
She watched him hasten after the others. She laughed a little,
and congratulated herself on her beautiful discretion. And then she
went over to Bedstemor's, and on her way met old Kari carrying a
bundle of wood. Old Kari, who always plunged without preliminaries
into a conversation, said:
"Perhaps that nice Englishwoman will find a husband here after
all, poor thing. Perhaps the Englishman will marry her. What dost
thou think?"
Meanwhile Clifford hurried after the Saeter pilgrims, and caught
up with Gerda and Ejnar. Katharine and Alan were on in front, but he
did not attempt to join them. But he heard Alan laugh, and he was
glad. A great gladness seized him as he walked on and on. She was
there. That was enough for him. Ah, how he had thought of her
when he was away. She did not know. No one knew. It was his own
secret. No one could guess even. No one would ever know that
Alan's unhappiness was only one of the reasons for their sudden
return. There was another reason too: his own unconquerable
yearning to see her. He had tried to conquer it; and he had not tried
to conquer it. He had tried to ignore it; and he had not tried to
ignore it. He had said hundreds of times to himself, "I am not free to
love her;" and he had said hundreds of times too, "I am free to love
her." He had said of her, "She is kind and pitiful; but she would never
love me—a broken-spirited man—never—never." And he had said,
"She loves me." He had said, "No, no, not for me the joys of life and
love—not for me. But if only in earlier days—if only——" And he had
said, "The past is gone, and the future is before me. Why must I
turn from love and life?"
But he had ended with, "No, no, it is a selfish dream; there is
nothing in me worthy of her—nothing for me to offer her—nothing
except failure and a saddened spirit."
But this morning Clifford was not saying or thinking that. He
remembered only that she was there—and the world was beautiful.
For the moment, all troubles were in abeyance. He scarcely
remembered that the boy shirked being with him and went his own
way in proud reserve. He had, indeed, scarcely noticed it since his
return. If Alan went off with Jens, it was only natural that the two
lads should wish to be together. And for the rest, the rest would
come right in time. So he strode on, full of life and vigour, and with a
smile on his grave face. And Gerda said:
"And why do you smile, Professor?"
He answered:
"The world is beautiful, Frue.[M] And the air is so crisp and fine."
Gerda, who enjoyed being with Knutty's Englishman, was glad
that Ejnar was lingering behind picking some flower which had
arrested his attention. She did not mind how far he lingered behind
alone. It was the going on in front with Katharine which she wished
to prevent! She said to Clifford:
"Your countrywoman is very attractive. I like her immensely. Do
you like her?"
"Yes," said Clifford.
"She is not fond of chemistry, I think."
 "No."
"Nor is she botanical."
"No," said Clifford.
"Nevertheless, she has a great charm," said Gerda. "Tante calls it
temperamental charm. It must be delightful to have that mysterious
gift. For it is a gift, and it is mysterious."
Clifford was silent. Gerda thought he was not interested in the
Englishwoman.
"How blind he is!" she thought. "Even my Ejnar uses his eyes
better. He knows that woman is charming."
Katharine was indeed charming that morning, and to every one.
She had put little Fröken Eriksen, the Swedish artist, and the
Swedish mathematical Professor, Herr Lindstedt, into the gig, so that
they might enjoy a comfortable flirtation together. They laughed and
greeted her pleasantly as they drove on in front.
"Tack!" they said, turning round and waving to her. They felt she
understood so well.
Soon afterwards the Sorenskriver was found sitting on one of the
great blocks of stone which formed the railing of the steep road
down from the Solli Gaard.
"Good-morning," he said. "May a disagreeable old Norwegian join
this party of nations?"
Katharine beamed on him, and spoke the one Norwegian word of
which she was sure, "Velkommen!"
But she did not let him displace Alan. She kept the boy by her
side, giving him the best of her kindness and brightness. She drew
him out, heard something about his American journey, and listened
to a long description of the ship which took him out and brought him
home. He did not once speak of his father. And she did not speak of
him. But she had a strong belief that if she could only manage to
win the boy for herself, she could hand him back to his father and
say, "Here is your boy. He is yours again. I have won him for you."
It was a joy to her to feel that she was working for Clifford
Thornton. And with the pitiful tenderness that was her own
birthright, she was glad that she was trying to help the boy. She
knew she would succeed. No thoughts of failure crossed her mind.
No fears of that poor Marianne possessed her. She made no plans,
and reckoned on no contingencies. She had never been afraid of life.
That was all she knew. And without realising it, she had a
remarkable equipment for success in her self-imposed task. By
instinct, by revelation, by reason of her big, generous nature, she
understood Marianne: that poor Marianne, who, so she said to
Knutty, could not be called unmerciful if she was ignorant—since
mercy belonged only to true knowledge.
So she kept Alan by her side, and he was proud to be her chosen
companion. She said:
"This is our show, you know. The other people are merely here on
sufferance. And if the Sorenskriver says anything disagreeable about
England, we'll wollop him and leave him tied up to a tree until we
return."
"Or shove him down into the torrent," said Alan, delighted. "Here
it is, just handy."
"Yes; but he has not begun yet," she answered. "We must give
the poor man a chance."
"Don't you feel beastly angry when these foreigners say anything
against England?" he asked.
"Beastly angry!" she replied with gusto.
He smiled with quiet satisfaction. He loved her comradeship of
words as well as her comradeship of thoughts.
They passed over the bridge leading to the other side of the
Vinstra gorge, stopped to rest at the Landhandleri (store-shop), and
then began their long ascent to the Saeters. Up they went past
several fine old farms; and as they mounted higher, they could see
the Solli Gaard perched on the opposite ridge. The road was a rough
carriage-road leading up to a large sanatorium, which was situated
about three-quarters of the way to F——. As they mounted, the
forest of Scotch firs and spruces seemed thicker and darker, being
unrelieved by the presence of other trees, as in the valley below.
Leafy mosses formed the carpeting of the forest, and a wealth of
bilberries was accumulated in the spruce-woods; whilst the red
whortleberry showed itself farther on in open dry spots amongst the
pines which crept up higher than the Scotch firs—"Grantraeer," as
the Norwegians call them. Then they, in their turn, thinned out, and
the lovely birches began to predominate; so that the way through
the forest became less gloomy, and the spirits of the pilgrims rose
immediately, and Gerda sang. But, being Danish, she sang a song in
praise of her native beech-woods! And the Sorenskriver joined in
too, out of compliment to Denmark, but said that he would like to
recite to the English people the poem about the beeches of
Denmark, the birches of Sweden, and the fir-trees of Norway. The
beeches were as the Danes themselves, comfortable, easy; the
birches were even as the Swedes, graceful, gracious, light-hearted;
and the grim firs were as the Norwegians, gloomy, self-contained,
and sad.
"Therefore, Fröken," he said, turning to Katharine, "judge us
gently. We are even as our country itself, stern and
uncompromising."
"But grand, Herr Sorenskriver," said Katharine, "with nothing
petty."
"Nei da!" he said, looking pleased. "It would be nice to think that
this was as true of ourselves as of our mountains."
Then they glanced back at the snow-clad Rondane in the
distance; and they came out into the open country, and saw the
Jutenheim (the home of the giants) in front of them. They had left
the region of the firs, pines, and birches, and reached the land of
the dwarf-birch, the willow, and the persistent juniper. And here the
rough carriage-road ended; for the sanatorium, where the
fashionable Scandinavians were taking their summer mountain-
holiday, was now only a few yards off. The saeter pilgrims had
thought of dining there; but no one seemed inclined to face a crowd
of two hundred guests. So the little company drew up by the side of
a brook, and ate Mysost[N] sandwiches; the Sorenskriver, who
continued in the best of good humours, assuring Katharine that this
was an infallible way of learning Norwegian quickly. Alan was
disappointed that he was not rude.
"Then we could go for him," he said privately to Katharine.
"Oh, perhaps he may even yet be rude!" whispered Katharine,
reassuring him.
 When they had lunched and taken their ease, they started once
more on their journey, passing the precincts of the sanatorium in
order to hire boats for crossing the beautiful mountain lake; for F
—— was on the other side, perched high up on the mountain-slope.
By rowing over, they would save themselves about two miles of
circuitous rough road. Jens said that he would take the gig and the
horses round by the road to meet the boat. Alan went with him, but
he looked back wistfully at Katharine once or twice.
And now a curious thing happened. As Katharine and Gerda were
standing waiting for their boat, the sound of English voices broke
upon them.
"English," said Gerda. "That is a greeting for you."
"Well, it's very odd," said Katharine, listening; "but I've heard that
voice before."
"Perhaps you think it is familiar because it is English," suggested
Gerda.
"Perhaps," answered Katharine; but she was still arrested by the
sound.
"I thought the Sorenskriver said that no English people came
here?" she said.
"He said they came very rarely to these parts," Gerda replied.
"One or two Englishmen for fishing sometimes; otherwise Swedes,
Danes, Finns, Russians."
"I am sure I have heard that voice before," Katharine said. She
seemed troubled.
"There they go, you see," Gerda said, pointing to two figures.
"They were in the little copse yonder—two of your tall
Englishwomen. How distinctly one hears voices at this height! Well,
the Kemiker is waiting for us. Du milde Gud! Look at my Ejnar
handling the oars! Bravo, Ejnar!"
"Come, ladies," called Clifford cheerily from the boat. "Let us be
off before the Botaniker upsets the boat. He has been trying to
reach a plant at the bottom of the lake."
When they had taken their places, Katharine turned to Clifford,
who was looking radiantly happy, and she said:
 "Row quickly, row quickly, Professor Thornton. I want to get away
from here."
"Do you dislike the great caravanserai so much?" he said. "Well,
you have only to turn round, and there you have the Jutenheim
mountains in all their glory. Are they not beautiful?"
She looked at the snow-capped mountains; but for the moment
their beauty scarcely reached her. She was thinking of that voice.
When had she heard it? And where?
"The mountains, the mountains of Norway!" cried Clifford. "Ah,
I've always loved the North, and each time I come I love it more
passionately, and this time——"
No one was listening to him. Gerda and Ejnar were busy trying to
see what was in the bottom of the lake, and Katharine seemed lost
in her own thoughts. Suddenly she remembered where she had
heard that voice. It was Mrs Stanhope's. The words rushed to her
lips; she glanced at Clifford, saw and felt his happiness, and was
silent. But now she knew why the sound of that voice had aroused
feelings of apprehension and anxiety, and an instinctive desire to
ward off harm both from the man and the boy.
For directly she heard it, she had been eager to hurry Clifford
away, and relieved that Alan had gone on with Jens.

CHAPTER X.
So they rowed across the lake, he remembering nothing except
the joy of being with her, and she trying to forget that any discord of
unrest had broken in upon the harmonies of her heart. They landed
on swampy ground, and made their way over rare beautiful mosses,
ling, and low growth of bilberry and cloudberry. Ejnar and Gerda
became lost to all human emotions, and gave themselves up to the
joys of their profession. Long after all the rest of the little company
had met on the rocky main road to the Saeters, the two botanists
lingered in that fairyland swamp. At last Jens and Alan were sent
back to find them, and in due time they reappeared, with a rapt
expression on their faces and many treasures in their wallets. The
country grew wilder and grimmer as the pilgrims mounted higher.
The road, or track, was very rough, scarcely fit for a cariole or stol-
kjaerre, and the Swedish mathematical Professor felt anxiously
concerned about the comfort and safety of the little Swedish artist,
who was a bad walker, and who therefore preferred to jolt along in
the gig. But she did not mind. She laughed at his fears, and
whispered to Katharine with her pretty English accent:
"My lover is afraid for my safeness!"
And Katharine laughed and whispered back:
"I hope you are having a really good flirtation with him."
"Ja, ja," she answered softly, "like the English boy says 'reeping
good!'"
Grimmer and wilder still grew the mountainous country. They had
now passed the region of the dwarf-birch and willow-bushes, and
had come to what is called the "lichen zone," where the reindeer-
moss predominates, and where the bushes are either creeping
specimens, growing in tussocks, or else hiding their branches among
the lichens so that only the leaves show above them. It seemed
almost impossible to believe that here, on these more or less barren
mountain-plateaus, good grazing could be found for the cattle during
the summer months. Yet it was true enough that in this particular
district the cows and goats of about fifty Saeters found their summer
maintenance, about fifty of the great Gaards down in the side valleys
of the Gudbrandsdal owning, since time immemorial, portions of the
mountain grazing-land. The Sollis' Saeter was not in this region. It
was fifty miles distant from the Solli Gaard, and, as Jens told the
pilgrims, took two whole days to reach, over a much rougher
country than that which they had just traversed.
"This is nothing," said Jens smiling grimly, when the Swedish lady
was nearly thrown out of the gig on to Svarten's back. "We call this
a good road; and it goes right up to the first Saeter. Then you can
drive no more. Now you see the smoke rising from the huts. We are
there now."
Jens, usually so reserved and silent, was quite animated. The
mountain-air, and the feeling of being in the wild, free life he loved
so much, excited him. He was transformed from a quiet, rather surly
lad into an inspired human being fitted to his own natural
environment. Gerda, looking at him, thought immediately of
Björnson's Arne.
"You love the mountains, Jens?" she said to him.
"Yes," he answered simply. "I am always happy up at the Saeter.
One has thoughts."
They halted outside the first Saeter, and turned to look at the
beautiful scene. They were in the midst of low mountains. In the
distance, across the lake, they could see the snow-peaks of the
great Jutenheim range—the home of the giants. Around them rose
strange weird mountain forms, each one suggestive of wayward and
grim fancy. And over to the right, towering above a group of castle-
mountains, peopled with strange phantoms born of the loneliness
and the imagination, they saw the glistening peaks of the Rondane
caught by the glow of the sun setting somewhere—not there. And
below them was another mountain-lake, near which nestled two or
three Saeters apart from the rest, and in which they could see the
reflection of the great grey-blue clouds edged with gold. And above
them passed in tumultuous procession the wonders of a Norwegian
mountain evening sky of summer-time: clouds of delicate fabric,
clouds of heavy texture: calm fairy visions, changing imperceptibly to
wild and angry spectacle: sudden pictures of fierce and passionate
joy, and lingering impressions of deepest melancholy,—all of it
faithfully typical of the strange Norwegian temperament.
"One must have come up to the mountains," whispered Clifford to
Katharine, "to understand anything at all of the Norwegian mind.
This is the Norwegians, and the Norwegians are this."
And the grim old Sorenskriver, standing on the other side of
Katharine, said in his half-gruff, half-friendly way:
"Fröken, you see a wild and uncompromising Nature, without the
gentler graces. It is ourselves."
"And again I say, with nothing petty in it," said Katharine,
spreading out her arms. "On a big scale—vast and big—the graces
lost in the greatness."
"Look," said Jens, "the goats and cows are beginning to come
back to the Saeters. They have heard the call. You will see them
come from all directions, slowly and in their own time."
Slowly and solemnly they came over the fields, a straggling
company, each contingent led by a determined leading lady, who
wore a massive collar and bell. She looked behind now and again to
see if her crowd of supernumeraries were following her at
sufficiently respectful distances, and then she bellowed, and waited
outside her own Saeter. The saeter pilgrims stood a long time
looking at this characteristic Norwegian scene: the wild heath in
front of them was literally dotted with far-off specks, which gradually
resolved themselves into cows or goats strolling home in true
Norwegian fashion—largissimo lentissimo! Even as stars reveal
themselves in the sky, and ships on the sea, if one stares long and
steadily, so these cows and goats revealed themselves in that great
wild expanse. And just when there seemed to be no more distant
objects visible, suddenly something would appear on the top of a
hillock, and Jens would cry with satisfaction:
"See, there is another one!" He looked on as eagerly as all the
strangers, very much as an old salt gazing fixedly out to sea. Then
some of the saeter-girls came out to urge the lingering animals to
hurry themselves, and the air was filled with mysterious cries of
coaxment and impatience. At last the pilgrims went to inquire about
food and lodging for the night.
"You may get it perhaps," Jens remarked vaguely. This, of course,
was the Norwegian way of saying that they would get it; and when
they knocked at the door of the particular Saeter which Jens pointed
out to them, a dear old woman welcomed them to her stue (hut) as
though it were a palace. She liked to have visitors, and her only
regret was that she had not known in time to prepare the room for
them in best saeter fashion. Meanwhile, if they would rest, she
would do her utmost; and she suggested that the gentlemen should
go down to the Saeter by the lake and secure a lodging there, and
then they could return and have their meal in the stue here. She was
a pretty old woman. Pleasure and excitement lit up her sweet face
and made her eyes wonderfully bright. She wanted to know all about
her visitors, and Gerda explained that they were Swedes, Danes,
and English, and one Norwegian only, the Sorenskriver. She was
deeply interested in Katharine, and asked Gerda whether the English
Herr and the boy were Katharine's husband and son; and when
Gerda said that they were only friends, she seemed disappointed,
and patted Katharine on the shoulder in token of sympathy with her.
Gerda told Katharine, and Katharine laughed. She was very happy
and interested. She had forgotten the sound of that jarring voice. All
her gaiety and bonhomie had come back to her. It was she who
began to help their pretty old hostess. It was she who sprinkled the
fresh juniper-leaves over the floor, throwing so many that she had to
be checked in her reckless generosity. Then Gerda fetched the logs,
and made a grand fire in the old Peise (stone fireplace), and almost
immediately the warmth brought out the sweet fragrance of the
juniper-leaves. The old woman spread a fine woven cloth over the
one bed in the room. Then she bustled into the dairy and brought
out mysost—a great square block of it, and fladbröd, and coffee-
berries, which Katharine roasted and then crushed in the machine.
When the table had been set, the old woman brought a bowl of
cream and sugar, and the "vaffle" irons, and began to make vaffler
(pancakes). She filled three large plates with these delicious dainties,
and her eager face was something to behold. Finally she signed to
Katharine, who followed her into the dairy, and came back carrying
two wooden bowls of römmekolle—milk with cream on the top
turned sour.
"Now," she said triumphantly, "everything is ready. And here
come the Herrer. And now you will want some fresh milk. The cows
have just been milked."
"No, no, thou hast done enough. I will go and fetch the milk,"
said the Sorenskriver, who was in great spirits still, and almost like a
young boy. "Why, thou dear Heaven, I was a cotter's son and lived
up at the Saeter summer after summer. This is like my childhood
again. I am as happy as Jens!"
So off he went to the cowhouse at the other end of the little
saeter-enclosure. He began to sing a stev[O] with the milkmaids.
This was the stev:—
 [Listen]
Astri, my Astri, who cared but for me,
time you were caring so warmly for me;
Weeping each Saturday night when I left,
Do you remember it, now that it's past?
That was the time when I out-shone them
all,
Lawyer and priest in the valley were nought,
That was the time when I outshone them
all,
Lawyer and priest in the valley were nought.
 (The milkmaids answered)—
The time you were caring for Astri alone,
Was the time when that Svanaug you cared not to see;
The time when your steps were so active and brisk,
Hastening to greet me each Saturday eve.
That was the time when no riches on earth,
Fair could have seemed without my sweetheart's love.
That was the time when no riches on earth,
Fair could have seemed without my sweetheart's love.
He returned with two jugs of milk. A merry laugh sounded after
him, and he was smiling too. The saeter-door was divided into two
parts, and he shut the lower half to keep out the draught; and when
the old woman tried to slip away, leaving her guests to enjoy
themselves in their own fashion, he said:
"No, no, mor, thou must stay." And every one cried out:
"Thou must stay."
So she stayed. She tidied herself, folded a clean white silk
kerchief crosswise over her head, and took her place at the table,
dignified and charming in her simple ease of manner. Many an ill-
bred low-born, and ill-bred well-born society dame might have learnt
a profitable lesson from this old saeter-woman—something about
the unconscious grace which springs from true unself-consciousness.
And she smiled with pride and pleasure to see them all doing justice
to the vaffler, the mysost, the fladbröd, and the römmekolle. She
was particularly anxious that the English lady should enjoy the
römmekolle.
"Stakkar!" she said. "Thou must eat the whole of the top! Ja, saa,
with sugar on it! It is good. Thou canst not get it so good in thy
country? Thou hast no mountains there, no Saeters there? Ak, ak,
that must be a poor sort of country! Well, we cannot all be born in
Norway."
And she laughed to see Alan pegging away at the vaffler.
"The English boy shall have as many vaffler as he likes," she said.
"Wilt thou have some more, stakkar? I will make thee another
plateful."
It was a merry, merry meal. Every one was hungry and happy.
The Sorenskriver asked for some spaeke-kjöd (smoked and dried
mutton or reindeer) which was hanging up in the Peise. He cut little
slices out of it and made every one eat them.
"Otherwise," he said, "you will know nothing about a Norwegian
Saeter. And now a big piece for myself! Isn't it good, Botaniker? Ah,
if you eat it up, you will be inspired to find some rare plants here!"
Then they all drank the old saeter-woman's health.
"Skaal!" they said.
And then Clifford said:
"Skaal to Norway!"
And the Sorenskriver said:
"Skaal to England!"
And the botanists said:
"Skaal to Sweden!"
And the Swedish professor said:
"Skaal to Denmark!"
Then the Sorenskriver added:
"Would that all the nations could meet together up at the Saeter
and cry 'Skaal!'"
And at that moment there came a knock at the door, and a little
man in English knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket asked for
admittance.
"English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German?" asked the
Sorenskriver.
"Monsieur, je suis un peintre français," said the little man,
somewhat astonished.
"Then Skaal to France!" cried the merry company, draining their
coffee-cups.
The Frenchman, with that perfect tact characteristic of his nation,
thanked them in the name of his country, his hand on his heart; and
took his place amongst these strangers, at their invitation. And then
they gathered round the fire and heaped up the logs. Katharine
never forgot that evening: the five nations gathered together in that
quaint low room built of huge tree-trunks roughly put together, with
lichen and birch-leaves filling in the crevices: the curious mixture of
languages; the fun of understanding and misunderstanding: the
fragrance of the juniper: the delightful sense of good fellowship: the
happiness of being in the presence of the man she loved: the
mysterious influence of the wild mountains: the loosening of pent-up
instincts and emotions. Years afterwards she was able to recall every
detail of the surroundings: the Lur (horn) hanging on the wall, and
in those parts still used for calling to the cattle; the Langeleik (an old
kind of zither) in its own special recess, seldom found missing in real
old Norwegian houses, silent now, but formerly playing an important
part in the saeter-life of bygone days; the old wooden balances,
which seemed to belong to the period of the Ark; the sausages and
smoked meat hanging in the Peise; the branches of fir placed as
mats before the door; the saeter-woman passing to and fro, now
stopping to speak to one of her guests, now slipping away to attend
to some of her many saeter duties. Then at an opportune moment
the Sorenskriver said:
"Now, mor, if we heap on the logs, perhaps the green-dressed
Huldre will come and dance before the fire. Thou hast seen the
Huldre, thou? Tell us about her—wilt thou not?"
But she shook her head mysteriously, and went away as if she
were frightened; but after a few minutes she came back, and said in
an awed tone of voice:
"Twice I have seen the green-dressed Huldre—ak, and she was
beautiful! I was up at the Saeter over by my old home, and my
sweetheart had come to see me; and ak, ak, the Huldre came and
danced before the fire—and she bewitched him, and he went away
into the mountains and no one ever saw him again."
"And so," she added simply, "I had to get another sweetheart."
"Aa ja," said the Sorenskriver. "I expect there was no difficulty
about that."
"No," she answered, "thou art right."
And she beat a sudden retreat, as though she had said too much;
but she returned of her own accord, and continued:
"And the second time I saw the Huldre it was on the heath. I had
gone out alone to look for some of the cows who had not come
home, and I saw her on horseback. Her beautiful green dress
covered the whole of Blakken's back, and her tail swept the ground.
And Blakken flew, flew like lightning. And when I found the cows,
they were dying. The Huldre had willed them ill. That was fifty years
ago. But I see her now. No one can ever forget the Huldre."
So the evening passed, with stories of the Huldre, and the Trolds,
and the mountain-people of Norwegian lore; for here were the
strangers in the very birthplace of many of these weird legends, all,
or most of them, part and parcel of the saeter-life; all, or most of
them, woven out of the wild and lonely spirit of mountain-nature.
And then the little company passed by easy sequence to the
subject of visions and dreams. Some one asked Katharine if she had
ever had a vision.
"Yes," she answered; "once—once only."
"Tell it," they said.
But she shook her head.
"It would be out of place," she answered, "for, oddly enough, it
was about God."
"Surely, mademoiselle," said the Frenchman, "we are far away
enough from civilisation to be considered near enough to God for
the moment?"
But she could not be induced to tell it.
"You would think I was a religious fanatic," she said. "And I am
neither fanatical nor religious."
"Ah," said Ejnar, "I hope I may have a vision tonight of what is in
the bottom of that lake we crossed over."
"You did your very best, Professor, to include us all in that vision
of the bottom of the lake," said Clifford quaintly.
"My poor Ejnar, how they all tease you!" said Gerda.
"I think," said Katharine, "the Kemiker ought to know better,
being himself a scientific man. Probably if he were piloting us all
down a mine, he would not care what became of us if his eye lit on
some unexpected treasure of the earth-depths."
"Noble lady," said Ejnar, smiling; "I perceive I have a friend in
you, and the Kemiker has an enemy."
Clifford Thornton looked into the fire and laughed happily.
 Then Gerda said:
"Twice I have dreamed that I found a certain species of fungus in
a particular part of the wood; and guided by the memory of my
dream, the next day I have found it. Have you ever found anything
like that in a dream, Professor Thornton?"
Clifford looked up with a painful expression on his face.
"I always try my very hardest never to dream, Frue," he
answered.
"And why?" she asked.
"Because up to the present we appear to have no knowledge of
how to control our dreams," he replied.
"But if we could control them, they would not be dreams," said
Katharine.
"So much the better then," answered Clifford; "they would be
mere continuations of self-guided consciousness in another form."
"But it is their utter irresponsibility and wildness which give them
their magic!" cried the French artist. "In my dreams, I am the prince
of all painters born since the world began. Mon Dieu, to be without
that! I tremble! Life would be impossible! In my dreams I discover
unseen, unthought-of colours! I cry with rapture!"
"In my dreams," said the Swedish mathematician, "I find the
fourth dimension, the fifth dimension, the hundredth dimension!"
"In my dreams," said the Sorenskriver, waving his arms
grandiosely, "I see Norway standing by herself, strong, powerful,
irresistible as the Vikinger themselves, no union with a sister country
—nei, nei, pardon me, Mathematiker!"
"Why, you would take away the very inspiration of the poet, the
very life of the patriot's spirit," said Katharine, turning to Clifford.
"You are all speaking of the dreams which are the outcome of the
best and highest part of ourselves," said Clifford, speaking as if he
were in a dream himself. "But what about the dreams which are not
the outcome of our best selves?"
"Oh, surely they pass away as other dreams," she answered.
"But do you not see," he said, "that if there is a chance that the
artist remembers the rapture with which he discovered in his dream
that marvellous colour, and the patriot the joy which he felt on
beholding in his dreams his country strong and irresistible, there is
also a chance that less noble feelings experienced in a dream may
also be remembered?"
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
"Mon Dieu!" he said. "We cannot always be noble—not even in
our dreams. I, for my part, would rather take the chance of
dreaming that I injured or murdered some one and rejoiced over it,
than lose the chance of dreaming that I was the greatest artist in
the world. Why, I have murdered all my rivals in my dreams, and
they are still alive and painting with great éclat pictures entirely
inferior to mine! And I am no worse for having assassinated them
and rejoiced over my evil deeds in my dream."
"Probably because there were no evil consequences," Clifford
said. "But supposing there had been evil consequences, what then?"
"But you do not seriously believe that there is any such close
relationship between dream-life and actual life, between dream-
cause and actual effect?" asked Gerda.
"I do not know what I believe about it, Frue," he answered.
"Some day science will be able to explain to us the mysterious
working of the brain in normal life, in dream-life, in so-called death:
and the connecting links."
He had risen as he spoke, as though he, even as the old saeter-
woman, had let himself go too much, and now wished to slip away
quietly. But they all rose too, and the Sorenskriver said:
"We have spent a true saeter-evening, communing with
mysteries. The spirit of place has seized us, the mountain-spirit. But
if we do not soon get to rest and sleep dreamlessly, we shall have no
brains left us in the morning for yet another mountain mystery—the
making of the Mysost!"
"Tak for maden" (thanks for the meal), he added, turning to the
old saeter-woman.
"Tak for maden!" cried every one in a pleasant chorus.
"And tak for behageligt selskab!" (thanks for your delightful
company), he said, turning to all his comrades.
"Tak for behageligt selskab!" cried every one.
 Then the men went off to the Saeter down by the lake; and
Katharine, Gerda, and the little Swedish artist arranged themselves
for rest as well as they could in a rough saeter-stue. The two of
them were soon asleep; but Katharine lay on her bench in the corner
watching the fire, listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking
of Clifford Thornton.
"Dreams, dreams," she thought. "Why should he dread to dream?
And his face was full of pain when he said that he tried never to
dream. Ah, if I could only reach him—sometimes we seem so near—
and then——"
Katharine slept.
But in the morning she was up betimes, and out in the early
freshness and crispness. She was alone on that wild expanse. There
was deep stillness all around her. Silently, softly the magic mists
were caressing the mountains. The stars were losing their own
brightness in the brightening skies. The sun was breaking over the
distant snow-peaks of the Giant range. She was alone with Nature.
And Nature set her free.
"My belovèd!" she cried. "My life was as grey as this great dreary
wild until your presence glorified it. You broke in upon my loneliness
—the bitterest loneliness on earth—a woman's heart-loneliness,—
you broke in upon it so that now nothing of it remains—scarcely the
memory. Have no fear, my belovèd. I will gather up your past life
and your past love with reverential tenderness. I have no fear. My
love for you and my belief in you shall conquer everything."
Clifford Thornton was mounting from the Saeter down by the
lake-side. He came out joyously into the freshness and crispness of
the early morning. He was alone on that wild expanse. There was
deep stillness all around him. Silently, softly the magic mists were
caressing the mountains. The stars were losing their own brightness
in the brightening skies. The sun was breaking over the distant
snow-peaks of the Giant range. He was alone with Nature. And
Nature set him free.
"My love!" he cried. "I fling the past behind me at last. There are
no barriers—none—none. Fool that I was to think I was not free.
Free! I am as free as these vast stretches of wild country, free as
this mountain air. Do you know, will you ever know, oh, you must
know, my own belovèd, that I am yours—yours, unutterably yours.
Shall I ever clasp you in my arms and know that you are mine?"
Then suddenly he saw Katharine in the distance, and she saw
him. She was moving towards him as he was moving towards her.
He hastened to meet her with a tornado of wild gladness in his
heart.
But when they came face to face they stood in silence, as when
they had first met on the evening of the quartette.
He was the first to find words.
"Don't let us go back," he said; "let us go on—let us go on—the
morning is still young—and there is no gladness like the gladness of
the early morning. What do you think?"
"No gladness like the gladness of the early morning," she
repeated joyously.
So they passed on together, over the wild and stony heathland, in
the direction of the Rondane mountains: he with a song in his heart,
she with the same song in hers.
"Isn't it glorious to be up here?" he cried. "I feel like the
Sorenskriver himself—a silent, surly fellow suddenly turned light-
hearted and eloquent. Knutty always said I ought to have been a
Norwegian."
"And I feel like Jens," said Katharine, "an inspired person, with
grand, big thoughts in my mind, which I shall lose on my way down
to the valley again. Ak, ak!"
"What was your vision?" he asked. "Will you not tell me?"
"If you wish," she answered; "but it is not worth telling, really. I
have never told any one. I don't know how I came to let those
words slip out last night."
"Tell me," he said, turning to her.
"Well," she said, "I was going to have a slight operation to my
mouth, and some anæsthetic had been given to me. I was trying my
very hardest to keep my consciousness to the last millionth of a
minute, when I saw a look of great mental suffering and tension on
the surgeon's face. And I said to myself, 'I will be merciful to the
man, and I will make a sacrifice to him of what I value most on
earth at this moment: the tiny remaining fragment of my
consciousness. He will never know, and no one will ever know; all
the same, from my point of view, it is a deed of infinite mercy.' So I
let myself pass into unconsciousness an infinitesimal instant of time
sooner than I need have done. I heard him say, 'Now!' Suddenly I
found myself in a vast region, which seemed limitless, which seemed
to consist of infinite infinities which one nevertheless could see were
finities blending with each other imperceptibly."
Katharine stood still a moment.
"And I realised," she continued, "how little I had ever known
about the proportion of things, how little my mind had ever grasped
the true significance of finities, which here were certainly infinities. I
felt entirely bewildered, and yet wildly excited. Ever since I can
remember, great space has always excited me. And suddenly, whilst
I was wondering where to go, what to do, whom to reach, I saw a
woman near me—a beautiful woman of so-called ill-fame. And she
cried out to me:
"'This is heaven, and I am straining upwards, upwards, upwards
through all the infinities until I reach God. For it takes the highest to
understand the lowest.'
"And I went with her, and a dim vision of God broke upon me,
and I knew no more. But I came back to consciousness, saying, 'For
it takes the highest to understand the lowest.'"
She paused a moment, and then said:
"If I had been thinking of God, I could better understand why I
had that vision."
"You had been thinking of God," he answered. "You had thought
of mercy and sacrifice, of an inappreciable quantity and quality from
a finite point of view; and that led you to think unconsciously of the
different aspect and value of things when seen and understood by
an infinite mind unbounded by horizons. If there is a God, that must
be God—the greatest and highest mind which understands the
lowest grade of everything: religion, morals, morals, religion."
"But it is not you who should have a vision of that kind," he
added. "You do not need it. It should come to those who cannot see
beyond their prison wall. It might make them wish to break through
it and see the open space, and still more open space, and still more
open space. But you, who have the free spirit, you were surely born
in the open space; no petty narrow horizon for you, but a wide and
generous expanse."
"Alas!" she said, "you are imputing to me virtues which I have
not!"
"They are not virtues," he answered. "They are part of your
temperament; born with you, not acquired."
She smiled at his praise. It was very sweet to her. He smiled too.
He was proud that he, a prisoner of silence, had had the courage to
say those words to her. And on they went together, he with a song in
his heart, and she with the same song in hers. Once she thought to
ask him why he tried never to dream; but she glanced at his grave
face lit up with happiness, and she grudged that even a passing
shadow of pain should mar the brightness of the morning. And once,
perhaps at that same moment, he himself thought of his dreams,
and felt, by sudden inspiration, that one day, one day he would be
able to open his heart to her—the woman born in the open space—
and tell her the history of his burdened mind. The thought flashed
through him, and brought, not memories of the past, but hopes for
the future.
At last they turned back to the Saeter, and realised they had
come a long way: far away from the beat of the cows and goats. But
after a spell of solitude, they met a few of the wandering creatures,
who stopped to look at them and inquire in loud chorus what right
they had to venture on these private pastures. And after a time they
came upon more stragglers; and then they made out a black cow in
the distance, immovable and contemplative; but, on closer
inspection, it proved to be Ejnar examining some new-found
treasure! As they approached he called out to them:
"What have you brought back from your long walk?"
"Nothing, nothing," they cried together.
"Well," he answered, looking at them pityingly, "how foolish to go
for a long walk, then!"
They laughed, passed on, and found Gerda standing scanning the
distance.
 "Did you see my Ejnar?" she inquired. "It is time for breakfast,
and the Sorenskriver has been singing in the Lur to call every one in.
Listen, there it is again! The Sorenskriver is in great good spirits
again this morning. He is like a big boy."
He was like a big, good-natured boy at breakfast too. Alan
confided to Katharine that he thought the old chap was behaving
awfully disappointingly well.
"He hasn't been disagreeable one single moment," Alan
whispered. "And look here, he has given me this Lap knife. Isn't it
jolly of him?"
"I think that we shall all have to give him a vote of thanks instead
of wolloping him and tying him to a tree," whispered Katharine.
"Oh, but there's all the way back yet," said Alan quaintly. And
then he added, "I say, you'll let me come along with you again,
won't you?"
"Of course," she answered, her heart going out to the boy. "Of
course; we are the leaders of this expedition, and must take our
followers safely home."
He blushed in his boyish way, and slipped away with a happy
smile on his young face. He did not know it, but he admired and
liked Katharine tremendously. He did not realise it, but he always
felt, after he had been with Katharine, that his old love and longing
for his father began to tug at his heart. He went and stood by him
now in front of the Saeter, and slipped his arm through his father's.
"It's splendid up here, isn't it, father?" he said.
"Yes, Alan," answered the man joyfully, as he felt the touch of his
boy's arm.
It was the first time for many months that the boy had crept up
to his father in his old chum-like fashion. Katharine watched him,
and knew that for the moment they were happy together, and that
she had begun and was carrying on successfully her work of love
and healing for the boy as well as for the man.
"It is a morning of happiness," she said to herself; and when the
merry little Swedish artist came into the saeter-hut and showed her
the sketch which she had been making of the interior, she found the
Englishwoman as gay as herself.
 "Why," she said to Katharine, "you look as if you was having the
flirts as well as me! What do you think of my sketch? Not bad? I give
it perhaps to my lover." Then she danced round the room singing a
gay Swedish melody.
The old saeter-woman laughed, clapped her hands, and cried:
"Ja vel, it is good to dance when one is young and happy!"
And then the Sorenskriver blew the Lur again to summon every
one to the cheese-making.
"Mor," he said, "thou must show us everything, so that all these
foreign people may remember the only right way to make the best
cheese in the world."
So they went into the dairy, and saw all the different kinds of
bowls and pans, and rows of square blocks of Mysost kept there to
settle into solidarity. Each block weighed about ten pounds, and
Katharine was amazed to hear that it took the milk of forty goats to
make one of these cheeses a-day. Then they saw the infernal
machine which separates the milk from the cream, and the
Sorenskriver, still acting as general showman, poured a vessel of
fresh rich milk into the iron ogre, whilst Katharine, under directions,
turned the handle, and made the mighty beast to roar and screech.
Every one's nerves were set on edge. Ejnar dashed wildly from the
hut; but was collared by Alan and Jens, for the Sorenskriver cried
out:
"Don't let the Botaniker go off by himself. We shall never find him,
and our time is getting short."
And then they went to the other little hut where the cheese was
being made. There were two large open caldrons over the great
stone-oven, and two pretty young saeter-girls (saeter-jenter) were
busily stirring the contents of the caldrons. They told Gerda that one
caldron contained cream and the other milk, from which the cheese
had first been taken by mixing it with yeast. And the pigs got the
rejected cheese. Then the two liquids were heated slowly for about
four hours, being stirred unceasingly, and when they were on the
verge of boiling, they were mixed together. Meantime they both
looked and tasted like toffee, and smelt like toffee too.
 "And now you have seen the true and only Mysost, mine Damer
og Herrer," said the Sorenskriver dramatically. "Now you know the
two secrets of Norwegian greatness—the Mountains and the
Mysost!"
And he half meant it, too, although he laughed. And the old
saeter-woman quite meant it.
"Ja, ja," she said proudly, and inclined her head with true
Norwegian dignity.
Then they packed up and paid. The paying was not quite an easy
matter. The old saeter-woman made no fixed charge, and appeared
not to want to take any money. The Sorenskriver had a twinkle in his
eye when he settled up. He knew that, in accordance with
Norwegian peasant etiquette, she would appear to be indifferent to
the money, accept it reluctantly, and then probably not consider it
enough! However, he managed this delicate task with great skill, and
began to arrange for returning to the Solli Gaard. But none of the
company were anxious to be off. They lingered about, strolling,
talking, laughing. The French artist was making a small water-colour
of the picturesque interior of the stue. And he wanted to come with
them too, if they could wait a little. The old saeter-woman gave
Katharine a large cow-bell.
"It has rung on these mountains a hundred years and more," she
said. "Thou shalt have it. It is for thee, stakkar. I like thee. Thou art
beautiful and kind. It is a pity thou art not that Englishman's wife."
She beckoned to Gerda to come and translate her words, and the
three women laughed together. Gerda said in a whisper:
"It is a good thing that the Kemiker is out of the way. He would
be astonished, wouldn't he? I don't think love is much in his line, is
it? Why, he is less human even than my poor Ejnar—if indeed such a
thing is possible!"
But Katharine stooped down and kissed the old saeter-woman.
"Tusend, tusend tak!" she said. She rang the bell, and then
pointed to the old woman and then to her own heart. She attempted
some Norwegian words of explanation, too, most of them wrong—
which added to the merriment. The Sorenskriver translated them.
"When I ring the bell, I shall think of you."
 A few minutes later Katharine, Alan, and Clifford were sitting on
the great blocks of stone outside the saeter-enclosure, when Alan
said:
"Hullo! Here are two people coming up the road—two ladies.
They have alpenstocks. What bosh! Any baby could get up here."
"Probably they are on their way to some real climbing," Clifford
said. "You know the Norwegian women walk and climb a great deal
in the summer. I always think of little Hilda Wangel in Ibsen's
'Master-builder' when I see them with their stocks and knapsacks.
You remember she came straight from the mountains to the Master-
builder's office—'the young generation knocking, knocking at the
door.' Ah, and that reminds me about Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt.' We must
not leave the Gudbrandsdal without making a pilgrimage to Peer
Gynt's home. Jens has been telling me about it. That ought to be
our next outing. Will you come?"
"I am ready for anything," Katharine answered.
"Hullo!" said Alan; "English voices. We ought to get up and wave
a Union-Jack."
The voices came nearer and nearer. Katharine heard that same
hard, metallic tone which had distressed her on the previous
evening. She was distressed now. She looked from father to son and
son to father. They had not yet recognised that voice. But they
understood instinctively that some disturbing element had come into
their atmosphere. They stood up. Katharine rose. They were on
either side of her. The next moment Mrs Stanhope and her
companion appeared on the top of the ridge, and stood face to face
with them. For one brief moment they were all too much astonished
to utter even an exclamation of surprise. They merely looked at each
other.
Then Mrs Stanhope stepped forward, and held out her hand to
Alan. She ignored the presence of Clifford and Katharine, and made
straight for the boy.
"Alan," she said in her kindest way, "who would have thought to
find you up here?"
"This is my dear friend's son," she said, turning to her companion.
"You know how often I have spoken of Marianne to you."
 Slowly, reluctantly the boy left Katharine's side, and took the hand
held out to him.
"I thought you were far away in America," Mrs Stanhope said.
"We have come back," the boy answered simply.
"Ah me," she said, with a glance at Clifford and Katharine. "The
dead are soon forgotten."
And she added:
"Well, dear boy, some other time we must have another long talk
together. And remember I am always waiting for you—for your dear
mother's sake."
And she passed on, but they heard her saying aloud to her friend:
"And that is the woman I told you about. She amuses herself with
men and throws them over, just as she threw over Willy Tonedale,
my poor infatuated cousin. And now she is amusing herself with this
widower. She might have had the decency to wait a little longer until
poor Marianne——"
Katharine hurried after the two women.
"How dare you, how dare you speak of me in that way?" she said
in a voice which trembled with passion. "Some day you shall answer
to me for it. If we were not in a foreign country, you should answer
to me for it now."
"It is good of you to put it off until we are in our own country,"
said Mrs Stanhope, with a forced laugh. But she looked uneasy, for
Katharine's flushed and angry face was not reassuring.
At that moment the Sorenskriver, the Swedish mathematical
Professor, the little Swedish artist, and the Frenchman came out of
the stue.
"Well," asked the Sorenskriver, "are we all ready? Thou art not
glad to leave the Saeter, Jens. Nor am I. But all good times must
come to an end. Nei, da, Fröken Frensham! Are we leaving just
when you have found compatriots? That is too bad."
"Oh, I think I can do without them for the present," Katharine
said, with a laugh. She had composed herself outwardly, but
inwardly she was consumed with anger and mortified pride. But her
moral courage did not forsake her, although she knew that Mrs
Stanhope had deliberately tried to put her at a disadvantage with
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