Page:Round the Yule Log.djvu/233

 THE GIANT AND JOHANNES BLESSOM. Above Vaage parsonage rises a hill or small mountain, crowned with tall and majestic pine-trees. It is called the " Jutulsberg," or the giant's mountain, by the Vaage people. It is very steep and is full of deep dark crevices. By a freak of nature a. formation of the rocks, somewhat resembling a lai^e gateway, can be seen in one of its most bare and weatherbeaten sides. If you stand on the bridge over the wild Finne river, or on the further side of the fields, and look up at the gate above the overhanging garlands and luxuriant foliage of the weeping birch which grows out of the fissures in the rock, and if, in addition, you call your imagination to your assistance, the formation takes the appearance of a double gateway, which at the top is joined in a gothic arch. Old, white-stemmed birch trees stand as pillars at its sides, but their lofty crowns do not reach up to where the arch begins. If the gateway extended into the mountain the length of a church, you could put Vaage church with roof and spire into it. It is not an ordinary door or gate, — it is the entrance to the giant's