CHAPTER I.
"Dream by dream shot through her eyes, and each Outshone the last that lighted." SWINBURNE.
Midnight,--without darkness, without stars! Midnight--and the unwearied sun stood, yet visible in the heavens, like a victorious king throned on a dais of royal purple bordered with gold.

The sky above him,--his canopy,--gleamed with a cold yet lustrous blue, while across it slowly flitted a few wandering clouds of palest amber, deepening, as they sailed along, to a tawny orange.

A broad stream of light falling, as it were, from the centre of the magnificent orb, shot lengthwise across the Altenfjord, turning its waters to a mass of quivering and shifting color that alternated from bronze to copper,--from copper to silver and azure.
The surrounding hills glowed with a warm, deep violet tint, flecked here and there with touches of bright red, as though fairies were lighting tiny bonfires on their summits.

Away in the distance a huge mass of rock stood out to view, its rugged lines transfigured into ethereal loveliness by a misty veil of tender rose pink,--a hue curiously suggestive of some other and smaller sun that might have just set.
Absolute silence prevailed.

Not even the cry of a sea-mew or kittiwake broke the almost deathlike stillness,--no breath of wind stirred a ripple on the glassy water.