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                      ELSKET, AND OTHER STORIES




                        BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE.


          ELSKET AND OTHER STORIES.  12mo,                $1.00
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                                ELSKET
                          _AND OTHER STORIES_

                                  BY
                          THOMAS NELSON PAGE



                               NEW YORK
                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
                                 1893




                          COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.




                            TO HER MEMORY




                               CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE
  ELSKET                                                               1

  "GEORGE WASHINGTON'S" LAST DUEL                                     52

  P'LASKI'S TUNAMENT                                                 118

  "RUN TO SEED"                                                      147

  "A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE"                                          180




                                ELSKET.

                "The knife hangs loose in the sheath."
                                          --OLD NORSK PROVERB.


I spent a month of the summer of 188- in Norway--"Old Norway"--and a
friend of mine, Dr. John Robson, who is as great a fisherman as he is
a physician, and knows that I love a stream where the trout and I can
meet each other alone, and have it out face to face, uninterrupted
by any interlopers, did me a favor to which I was indebted for the
experience related below. He had been to Norway two years before, and
he let me into the secret of an unexplored region between the Nord
Fiord and the Romsdal. I cannot give the name of the place, because
even now it has not been fully explored, and he bound me by a solemn
promise that I would not divulge it to a single soul, actually going to
the length of insisting on my adding a formal oath to my affirmation.
This I consented to because I knew that my friend was a humorous man,
and also because otherwise he positively refused to inform me where
the streams were about which he had been telling such fabulous fish
stories. "No," he said, "some of those ---- cattle who think they
own the earth and have a right to fool women at will and know how to
fish, will be poking in there, worrying Olaf and Elsket, and ruining
the fishing, and I'll be ---- if I tell you unless you make oath." My
friend is a swearing man, though he says he swears for emphasis, not
blasphemy, and on this occasion he swore with extreme solemnity. I saw
that he was in earnest, so made affidavit and was rewarded.

"Now," he said, after inquiring about my climbing capacity in a way
which piqued me, and giving me the routes with a particularity which
somewhat mystified me, "Now I will write a letter to Olaf of the
Mountain and to Elsket. I once was enabled to do them a slight service,
and they will receive you. It will take him two or three weeks to get
it, so you may have to wait a little. You must wait at L---- until Olaf
comes down to take you over the mountain. You may be there when he
gets the letter, or you may have to wait for a couple of weeks, as he
does not come over the mountain often. However, you can amuse yourself
around L----; only you must always be on hand every night in case Olaf
comes."

Although this appeared natural enough to the doctor, it sounded rather
curious to me, and it seemed yet more so when he added, "By the way,
one piece of advice: don't talk about England to Elsket, and don't ask
any questions."

"Who is Elsket?" I asked.

"A daughter of the Vikings, poor thing," he said.

My curiosity was aroused, but I could get nothing further out of him,
and