The long, low, white farmhouse stands on a green hill at the head of
the Romsdal. A flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the
stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a big bell to call
the labourers home from the fields. In the corner of the living-
room of the old house there is a broad fireplace built across the
angle. Curious cupboards are tucked away everywhere. The long
table in the dining-room groans thrice a day with generous fare.
There are as many kinds of hot bread as in a Virginia country-house;
the cream is thick enough to make a spoon stand up in amazement;
once, at dinner, we sat embarrassed before six different varieties
of pudding.
In the evening, when the saffron light is beginning to fade, we go
out and walk in the road before the house, looking down the long
mystical vale of the Rauma, or up to the purple western hills from
which the clear streams of the Ulvaa flow to meet us.
Above Stuefloten the Rauma lingers and meanders through a smoother
and more open valley, with broad beds of gravel and flowery meadows.
Here the trout and grayling grow fat and lusty, and here we angle
for them, day after day, in water so crystalline that when one steps
into the stream one hardly knows whether to expect a depth of six
inches or six feet.
Tiny English flies and leaders of gossamer are the tackle for such
water in midsummer. With this delicate outfit, and with a light
hand and a long line, one may easily outfish the native angler, and
fill a twelve-pound basket every fair day. I remember an old
Norwegian, an inveterate fisherman, whose footmarks we saw ahead of
us on the stream all through an afternoon. Footmarks I call them;
and so they were, literally, for there were only the prints of a
single foot to be seen on the banks of sand, and between them, a
series of small, round, deep holes.
"What kind of a bird made those marks, Frederik?" I asked my
faithful guide.
"That is old Pedersen," he said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a
dot after every step. We shall catch him in a little while."
Sure enough, about six o'clock we saw him standing on a grassy
point, hurling his line, with a fat worm on the end of it, far
across the stream, and letting it drift down with the current. But
the water was too fine for that style of fishing, and the poor old
fellow had but a half dozen little fish. My creel was already
overflowing, so I emptied out all of the grayling into his bag, and
went on up the river to complete my tale of trout before dark.
And when the fishing is over, there is Graygown with the wagon,
waiting at the appointed place under the trees, beside the road.
The sturdy white pony trots gayly homeward. The pale yellow stars
blossom out above the hills again, as they did on that first night
when we were driving down into the Valders. Frederik leans over the
back of the seat, telling us marvellous tales, in his broken
English, of the fishing in a certain lake among the mountains, and
of the reindeer-shooting on the fjeld beyond it.
"It is sad that you go to-morrow," says he "but you come back
another year, I think, to fish in that lake, and to shoot those
reindeer."
Yes, Frederik, we are coming back to Norway some day, perhaps,--who
can tell? It is one of the hundred places that we are vaguely
planning to revisit. For, though we did not see the midnight sun
there, we saw the honeymoon most distinctly. And it was bright
enough to take pictures by its light.
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