IN January of sixteen hundred and sixty-four, Ulrik Frederik was appointed Viceroy of Norway, and in the beginning of April the same year, he departed for his post. Marie Grubbe went with him.

The relation between them had not improved, except in so far as the lack of mutual² understanding and mutual love had, as it were, been accepted by both as an unalterable fact, and found expression in the extremely ceremonious manner they had adopted toward each other.

For a year or more after they had moved to Aggershus, things went on much in the same way, and Marie, for her part, desired no change. Not so Ulrik Frederik; for he had again become enamored of his wife.

On a winter afternoon, in the gloaming, Marie Grubbe sat alone in the little parlor³ known from olden time as the Nook. The day was cloudy and dark, with a raw, blustering⁴ wind. Heavy flakes⁵ of melting snow were plastered into the corners of the tiny window-panes, covering almost half the surface of the greenish glass. Gusts⁶ of wet, chilly⁷ wind went whirling down between the high walls, where they seemed to lose their senses and throw themselves blindly upon shutters⁸ and doors, rattling⁹ them fiercely, then flying skyward again with a hoarse¹⁰, dog-like whimper. Powerful blasts came shrieking¹¹ across the roofs opposite and hurled¹² themselves against windows and walls, pounding like waves, then suddenly dying away. Now and again a squall would come roaring down the chimney. The flames ducked their frightened heads, and the white smoke, timidly curling toward the chimney like the comb of a breaker, would shrink back, ready to throw itself out into the room. Ah, - 159 - in the next instant it is whirled, thin and light and blue, up through the flue, with the flames calling after it, leaping and

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