LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY

BENTLEY AND SON
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen

1896
(All rights reserved]

Τ Η Ε L M Α.

BOOK I.

THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN.

CHAPTER I.

“ Dream by dream shot through her eyes, and each
Outshone the last that lightened.”

SWINBURNE,

MIDNIGHT,—without darkness, without stars ! Midnight,--and the unwearied sun stood, yet visible in the heavens, like a victorious king throned on a daïs 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 colour that alternated from bronze to copper, -- from copper to silver and

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