The time came on for Mildrid to be confirmed; she made acquaintance with other young people of her own age, and some of them began to come up to Tingvold on Sundays.  Mildrid saw them either out of doors or in her grandmother’s room.  Tingvold had always been a forbidden, and consequently mysteriously attractive place to the young people.  But even now, only those with a certain quietness and seriousness of disposition went there, for it could not be denied that there was something subdued about Mildrid, that did not attract every one.

At this particular time there was a great deal of music and singing among the youth of the district.  For some reason or other there are such periods, and these periods have their leaders.  One of the leaders now was, curiously enough, again of the race of Haugen.

Amongst a people where once on a time, even though it were hundreds of years ago, almost every man and woman sought and found expression for their intensest feelings and experiences in song, and were able themselves to make the verses that gave them relief—­amongst such a people the art can never quite die out.  Here and there, even though it does not make itself heard, it must exist, ready on occasion to be awakened to new life.  But in this district songs had been made and sung from time immemorial.  It was by no mere chance that Ole Haugen was born here, and here became what he was.  Now it was his grandson in whom the gift had reappeared.

Ole’s son had been so much younger than the daughter who had married into the Tingvold family, that the latter, already a married woman, had stood godmother to her little brother.  After a life full of changes, this son, as an old man, had come into possession of his father’s home and little bit of land far up on the mountain-side; and, strangely enough, not till then did he marry.  He had several children, among them a boy called Hans, who seemed to have inherited his grandfather’s gifts—­not exactly in the way of fiddle-playing, though he did play—­but he sang the old songs beautifully and made new ones himself.  People’s appreciation of his songs was not a little added to by the fact that so few knew himself; there were not many that had even seen him.  His old father had been a hunter, and while the boys were quite small, the old man took them out to the hillside and taught them to load and aim a gun.  They always remembered how pleased he was when they were able to earn enough with their shooting to pay for their own powder and shot.  He did not live long after this, and soon after his death their mother died too, and the children were left to take care of themselves, which they managed to do.  The boys hunted and the girls looked after the little hill farm.  People turned to look at them when they once in a way showed themselves in the valley; they were so seldom there.  It was a long, bad road down.  In winter they occasionally came to sell or send off the produce of their hunting; in