the missive had not reached Dal until the 15th of April. Why! a month
had already elapsed since the letter was written! How many things
might have happened in a month on the shores of Newfoundland! Was it
not still winter, the dangerous season of equinoxes? Are not these
fishing banks the most dangerous in the world, swept by terrible gales
from the North Pole? A perilous and arduous vocation was this business
of fishing which Ole followed! And if he followed it was it not that
she, his betrothed, whom he was to marry on his return, might reap the
benefits?

Poor Ole! What did he say in this letter? Doubtless that he loved
Hulda as faithfully and truly as Hulda loved him, that they were
united in thought, in spite of the distance that separated them, and
that he longed for the day of his return to Dal.

Yes, he said all this, Hulda was sure of it. But perhaps he might add
that the day of his return was near at hand--that the fishing cruise
which had enticed the inhabitants of Bergen so far from their native
land, was nearly at an end. Perhaps Ole would tell her that the
"Viking" had finished taking aboard her cargo, that she was about
to sail, and that the last days of April would not pass without a
blissful meeting in the pleasant home at Vesfjorddal. Perhaps, too, he
would assure her, at last, that she might safely appoint the day for
the pastor to come to Moel to unite them in the little chapel whose
steeple rose from a small grove not a hundred yards from Dame Hansen's
inn.

To learn all this, it might only be necessary to break the seal, draw
out Ole's letter, and read it, through the tears of joy or sorrow that
its contents would be sure to bring to Hulda's eyes, and doubtless