LÅRDAL PARISH:

In the late summer of 1840, Sveinung Saddlemaker quietly resurfaced in Lårdal and went back to tooling harness. When questioned about where he had disappeared to, he would only smile and say, "North Norway." No one ever unraveled that mystery.

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ÅE FARM:

One evening that autumn, Gunnhild saw a tall lanky form trekking up the path that ran along The Dales. Her brother Mundi, she thought at first, but no. Who was it? She leaned on her scythe, taking a breather from reaping, and squinted into the lowering sun.

She gasped, threw aside the tool, and weeping with joy ran to meet Tall Såmund. "Your last letter said nothing about you coming home again so soon!" she sobbed into her husband's shoulder as he hugged her close.

"I wrote," he murmured back, "but good news always travels slower than ill tidings."

Gunnhild craned around his arm to look down the trail. "Where are Laki and Knut?" Then, seeing no one, gazed up at her husband in alarm. "Did they come to harm?"

"Nei, nei!" Tall Såmund said with a laugh and a shake of the head. "I left them behind. The farm at Muskego looks promising. Someone needs to hold our claim until it proves out. I left them enough funds for passage home, if the farm should fail. We should hear in a few months how they're faring." He gazed over the steep sloping fields of barley and laughed again. "Sometimes I think mountain folk ought to be born with one leg shorter than the other, to suit us for a life on the slant. There are hills in Wisconsin, but none like ours! I'll have to reacquaint my legs with the lay of the land." He stomped sideways up the hill toward the farm buildings, drawing Gunnhild after him. "The reaping can wait until tomorrow, Gunna. I long for the taste of your own hearty barley mush topped with cream from the mountain flocks of home!"

"A quick bite of flatbread and sugared butter, a bowl of mush, and if we're lucky a trout or two caught by Small Såmund, who, by the way, has shot up a good handspan while you've been gone! Children!" she called as they swept into the farmyard, arm in arm. "Your father is home!"