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Boyhood in Norway: Stories of Boy-Life in the Land of the Midnight Sun

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen · English · Gutenberg #784 · 333,447 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Boyhood in Norway: Stories of Boy-Life in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Author: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen


        
Release date: January 1, 1997 [eBook #784]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/784

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOYHOOD IN NORWAY: STORIES OF BOY-LIFE IN THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN ***




Produced by Charles Keller





BOYHOOD IN NORWAY

Stories Of Boy-Life In The Land Of The Midnight Sun

By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen




CONTENTS

     THE BATTLE OF THE RAFTS
     THE CLASH OF ARMS
     BICEPS GRIMLUND’S CHRISTMAS VACATION
     THE NIXY’S STRAIN
     THE WONDER CHILD
     “THE SONS OF THE VIKINGS”
      PAUL JESPERSEN’S MASQUERADE
     LADY CLARE  THE STORY OF A HORSE
     BONNYBOY
     THE CHILD OF LUCK
     THE BEAR THAT HAD A BANK ACCOUNT





THE BATTLE OF THE RAFTS




I. THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR

A deadly feud was raging among the boys of Numedale. The East-Siders
hated the West-Siders, and thrashed them when they got a chance; and
the West-Siders, when fortune favored them, returned the compliment
with interest. It required considerable courage for a boy to venture,
unattended by comrades, into the territory of the enemy; and no one took
the risk unless dire necessity compelled him.

The hostile parties had played at war so long that they had forgotten
that it was play; and now were actually inspired with the emotions which
they had formerly simulated. Under the leadership of their chieftains,
Halvor Reitan and Viggo Hook, they held councils of war, sent out
scouts, planned midnight surprises, and fought at times mimic battles. I
say mimic battles, because no one was ever killed; but broken heads
and bruised limbs many a one carried home from these engagements, and
unhappily one boy, named Peer Oestmo, had an eye put out by an arrow.

It was a great consolation to him that he became a hero to all the
West-Siders and was promoted for bravery in the field to the rank of
first lieutenant. He had the sympathy of all his companions in arms and
got innumerable bites of apples, cancelled postage stamps, and colored
advertising-labels in token of their esteem.

But the principal effect of this first serious wound was to invest the
war with a breathless and all-absorbing interest. It was now no longer
“make believe,” but deadly earnest. Blood had flowed; insults had been
exchanged in due order, and offended honor cried for vengeance.

It was fortunate that the river divided the West-Siders from the
East-Siders, or it would have been difficult to tell what might
have happened. Viggo Hook, the West-Side general, was a handsome,
high-spirited lad of fifteen, who was the last person to pocket an
injury, as long as red blood flowed in his veins, as he was wont to
express it. He was the eldest son of Colonel Hook of the regular army,
and meant some day to be a Von Moltke or a Napoleon. He felt in his
heart that he was destined for something great; and in conformity with
this conviction assumed a superb behavior, which his comrades found very
admirable.

He had the gift of leadership in a marked degree, and established his
authority by a due mixture of kindness and severity. Those boys whom he
honored with his confidence were absolutely attached to him. Those whom,
with magnificent arbitrariness, he punished and persecuted, felt meekly
that they had probably deserved it; and if they had not, it was somehow
in the game.

There never was a more absolute king than Viggo, nor one more abjectly
courted and admired. And the amusing part of it was that he was at heart
a generous and good-natured lad, but possessed with a lofty ideal of
heroism, which required above all things that whatever he said or did
must be striking. He dramatized, as it were, every phrase he uttered and
every act he performed, and modelled himself alternately after Napoleon
and Wellington, as he had seen them represented in the old engravings
which decorated the walls in his father’s study.

He had read much about heroes of war, ancient and modern, and he lived
about half his own life imagining himself by turns all sorts of grand
characters from history or fiction.

His costume was usually in keeping with his own conception of these
characters, in so far as his scanty opportunities permitted. An old,
broken sword of his father’s, which had been polished until it “flashed”
 properly, was girded to a brass-mounted belt about his waist; an
ancient, gold-braided, military cap, which was much too large, covered
his curly head; and four tarnished brass buttons, displaying the Golden
Lion of Norway, gave a martial air to his blue jacket, although the rest
were plain horn.

But quite independently of his poor trappings Viggo was to his comrades
an august personage. I doubt if the Grand Vizier feels more flattered
and gratified by the favor of the Sultan than little Marcus Henning did,
when Viggo condescended to be civil to him.

Marcus was small, round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, and freckle-faced.
His hair was coarse, straight, and the color of maple sirup; his nose
was broad and a little flattened at the point, and his clothes had a
knack of never fitting him. They were made to grow in and somehow he
never caught up with them, he once said, with no intention of being
funny. His father, who was Colonel Hook’s nearest neighbor, kept a
modest country shop, in which you could buy anything, from dry goods and
groceries to shoes and medicines. You would have to be very ingenious to
ask for a thing which Henning could not supply. The smell in the store
carried out the same idea; for it was a mixture of all imaginable smells
under the sun.

Now, it was the chief misery of Marcus that, sleeping, as he did, in the
room behind the store, he had become so impregnated with this curious
composite smell that it followed him like an odoriferous halo, and
procured him a number of unpleasant nicknames. The principal ingredient
was salted herring; but there was also a suspicion of tarred ropes, plug
tobacco, prunes, dried codfish, and oiled tarpaulin.

It was not so much kindness of heart as respect for his own dignity
which made Viggo refrain from calling Marcus a “Muskrat” or a
“Smelling-Bottle.” And yet Marcus regarded this gracious forbearance on
his part as the mark of a noble soul. He had been compelled to accept
these offensive nicknames, and, finding rebellion vain, he had finally
acquiesced in them.

He never loved to be called a “Muskrat,” though he answered to the name
mechanically. But when Viggo addressed him as “base minion,” in his
wrath, or as “Sergeant Henning,” in his sunnier moods, Marcus felt
equally complimented by both terms, and vowed in his grateful soul
eternal allegiance and loyalty to his chief.

He bore kicks and cuffs with the same admirable equanimity; never
complained when he was thrown into a dungeon in a deserted pigsty for
breaches of discipline of which he was entirely guiltless, and trudged
uncomplainingly through rain and sleet and snow, as scout or spy, or
what-not, at the behest of his exacting commander.

It was all so very real to him that he never would have thought of
doubting the importance of his mission. He was rather honored by the
trust reposed in him, and was only intent upon earning a look or word of
scant approval from the superb personage whom he worshipped.

Halvor Reitan, the chief of the East-Siders, was a big, burly peasant
lad, with a pimpled face, fierce blue eyes, and a shock of towy hair.
But he had muscles as hard as twisted ropes, and sinews like steel.

He had the reputation, of which he was very proud, of being the
strongest boy in the valley, and though he was scarcely sixteen years
old, he boasted that he could whip many a one of twice his years. He
had, in fact, been so praised for his strength that he never neglected
to accept, or even to create, opportunities for displaying it.

His manner was that of a bully; but it was vanity and not malice which
made him always spoil for a fight. He and Viggo Hook had attended
the parson’s “Confirmation Class,” together, and it was there their
hostility had commenced.

Halvor, who conceived a dislike of the tall, rather dainty, and
disdainful Viggo, with his aquiline nose and clear, aristocratic
features, determined, as he expressed it, to take him down a peg or two;
and the more his challenges were ignored the more persistent he grew in
his insults.

He dubbed Viggo “Missy.” He ran against him with such violence in the
hall that he knocked his head against the wainscoting; he tripped him up
on the stairs by means of canes and sticks; and he hired his partisans
who sat behind Viggo to stick pins into him, while he recited his
lessons. And when all these provocations proved unavailing he determined
to dispense with any pretext, but simply thrash his enemy within an inch
of his life at the first opportunity which presented itself. He grew to
hate Viggo and was always aching to molest him.

Halvor saw plainly enough that Viggo despised him, and refused to notice
his challenges, not so much because he was afraid of him, as because he
regarded himself as a superior being who could afford to ignore insults
from an inferior, without loss of dignity.

During recess the so-called “genteel boys,” who had better clothes and
better manners than the peasant lads, separated themselves from the
rest, and conversed or played with each other. No one will wonder
that such behavior was exasperating to the poorer boys. I am far from
defending Viggo’s behavior in this instance. He was here, as everywhere,
the acknowledged leader; and therefore more cordially hated than the
rest. It was the Roundhead hating the Cavalier; and the Cavalier making
merry at the expense of the Roundhead.

There was only one boy in the Confirmation Class who was doubtful as to
what camp should claim him, and that was little Marcus Henning. He was
a kind of amphibious animal who, as he thought, really belonged
nowhere. His father was of peasant origin, but by his prosperity and his
occupation had risen out of the class to which he was formerly attached,
without yet rising into the ranks of the gentry, who now, as always,
looked with scorn upon interlopers. Thus it came to pass that little
Marcus, whose inclinations drew him toward Viggo’s party, was yet forced
to associate with the partisans of Halvor Reitan.

It was not a vulgar ambition “to pretend to be better than he was” which
inspired Marcus with a desire to change his allegiance, but a deep,
unreasoning admiration for Viggo Hook. He had never seen any one who
united so many superb qualities, nor one who looked every inch as noble
as he did.

It did not discourage him in the least that his first approaches met
with no cordial reception. His offer to communicate to Viggo where there
was a hawk’s nest was coolly declined, and even the attractions of fox
dens and rabbits’ burrows were valiantly resisted. Better luck he had
with a pair of fan-tail pigeons, his most precious treasure, which Viggo
rather loftily consented to accept, for, like most genteel boys in the
valley, he was an ardent pigeon-fancier, and had long vainly importuned
his father to procure him some of the rarer breeds.

He condescended to acknowledge Marcus’s greeting after that, and to
respond to his diffident “Good-morning” and “Good-evening,” and Marcus
was duly grateful for such favors. He continued to woo his idol with
raisins and ginger-snaps from the store, and other delicate attentions,
and bore the snubs which often fell to his lot with humility and
patience.

But an event soon occurred which was destined to change the relations
of the two boys. Halvor Reitan called a secret meeting of his partisans,
among whom he made the mistake to include Marcus, and agreed with them
to lie in ambush at the bend of the road, where it entered the forest,
and attack Viggo Hook and his followers. Then, he observed, he would
“make him dance a jig that would take the starch out of him.”

The others declared that this would be capital fun, and enthusiastically
promised their assistance. Each one selected his particular antipathy to
thrash, though all showed a marked preference for Viggo, whom, however,
for reason of politeness, they were obliged to leave to the chief. Only
one boy sat silent, and made no offer to thrash anybody, and that was
Marcus Henning.

“Well, Muskrat,” cried Halvor Reitan, “whom are you going to take on
your conscience?”

“No one,” said Marcus.

“Put the Muskrat in your pocket, Halvor,” suggested one of the boys; “he
is so small, and he has got such a hard bullet head, you might use him
as a club.”

“Well, one thing is sure,” shouted Halvor, as a dark suspicion shot
through his brain, “if you don’t keep mum, you will be a mighty sick
coon the day after to-morrow.”

Marcus made no reply, but got up quietly, pulled a rubber sling from
his pocket, and began, with the most indifferent manner in the world,
to shoot stones down the river. He managed during this exercise, which
everybody found perfectly natural, to get out of the crowd, and, without
seeming to have any purpose whatever, he continued to put a couple of
hundred yards between himself and his companion.

“Look a-here, Muskrat,” he heard Halvor cry, “you promised to keep mum.”

Marcus, instead of answering, took to his heels and ran.

“Boys, the scoundrel is going to betray us!” screamed the chief. “Now
come, boys! We’ve got to catch him, dead or alive.”

A volley of stones, big and little, was hurled after the fugitive, who
now realizing his position ran for dear life. The stones hailed down
round about him; occasionally one vicious missile would whiz past his
ear, and send a cold shudder through him. The tramp of his pursuers
sounded nearer and nearer, and his one chance of escape was to throw
himself into the only boat, which he saw on this side of the river, and
push out into the stream before he was overtaken.

He had his doubts as to whether he could accomplish this, for the blood
rushed and roared in his ears, the hill-side billowed under his feet,
and it seemed as if the trees were all running a race in the opposite
direction, in order to betray him to his enemies.

A stone gave him a thump in the back, but though he felt a gradual heat
spreading from the spot which it hit, he was conscious of no pain.

Presently a larger missile struck him in the neck, and he heard a
breathless snorting close behind him. That was the end; he gave himself
up for lost, for those boys would have no mercy on him if they captured
him.

But in the next moment he heard a fall and an oath, and the voice was
that of Halvor Reitan. He breathed a little more freely as he saw the
river run with its swelling current at his feet. Quite mechanically,
without clearly knowing what he did, he sprang into the boat, grabbed
a boat-hook, and with three strong strokes pushed himself out into the
deep water.

At that instant a dozen of his pursuers reached the river bank, and
he saw dimly their angry faces and threatening gestures, and heard the
stones drop into the stream about him. Fortunately the river was partly
dammed, in order to accumulate water for the many saw-mills under the
falls. It would therefore have been no very difficult feat to paddle
across, if his aching arms had had an atom of strength left in them. As
soon as he was beyond the reach of flying stones he seated himself in
the stern, took an oar, and after having bathed his throbbing forehead
in the cold water, managed, in fifteen minutes, to make the further
bank. Then he dragged himself wearily up the hill-side to Colonel Hook’s
mansion, and when he had given his message to Viggo, fell into a dead
faint.

How could Viggo help being touched by such devotion? He had seen the
race through a fieldglass from his pigeon-cot, but had been unable to
make out its meaning, nor had he remotely dreamed that he was himself
the cause of the cruel chase. He called his mother, who soon perceived
that Marcus’s coat was saturated with blood in the back, and undressing
him, she found that a stone, hurled by a sling, had struck him, slid a
few inches along the rib, and had lodged in the fleshy part of his left
side.

A doctor was now sent for; the stone was cut out without difficulty,
and Marcus was invited to remain as Viggo’s guest until he recovered.
He felt so honored by this invitation that he secretly prayed he might
remain ill for a month; but the wound showed an abominable readiness to
heal, and before three days were past Marcus could not feign any ailment
which his face and eye did not belie.

He then, with a heavy heart, betook himself homeward, and installed
himself once more among his accustomed smells behind the store, and
pondered sadly on the caprice of the fate which had made Viggo a
high-nosed, handsome gentleman, and him--Marcus Henning--an under-grown,
homely, and unrefined drudge. But in spite of his failure to answer this
question, there was joy within him at the thought that he had saved
this handsome face of Viggo’s from disfigurement, and--who could
know?--perhaps would earn a claim upon his gratitude.

It was this series of incidents which led to the war between the
East-Siders and the West-Siders. It was a mere accident that the
partisans of Viggo Hook lived on the west side of the river, and those
of Halvor Reitan mostly on the east side.

Viggo, who had a chivalrous sense of fair play, would never have
molested any one without good cause; but now his own safety, and, as he
persuaded himself, even his life, was in danger, and he had no choice
but to take measures in self-defence. He surrounded himself with a
trusty body-guard, which attended him wherever he went. He sent little
Marcus, in whom he recognized his most devoted follower, as scout into
the enemy’s territory, and swelled his importance enormously by lending
him his field-glass to assist him in his perilous observations.

Occasionally an unhappy East-Sider was captured on the west bank of the
river, court-martialed, and, with much solemnity, sentenced to death as
a spy, but paroled for an indefinite period, until it should suit his
judges to execute the sentence. The East-Siders, when they captured a
West-Sider, went to work with less ceremony; they simply thrashed their
captive soundly and let him run, if run he could.

Thus months passed. The parson’s Confirmation Class ceased, and both the
opposing chieftains were confirmed on the same day; but Viggo stood at
the head of the candidates, while Halvor had his place at the bottom. [1]

During the following winter the war was prosecuted with much zeal, and
the West-Siders, in imitation of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, armed
themselves with cross-bows, and lay in ambush in the underbrush, aiming
their swift arrows against any intruder who ventured to cross the river.

Nearly all the boys in the valley between twelve and sixteen became
enlisted on the one side or the other, and there were councils of war,
marches, and counter-marches without number, occasional skirmishes, but
no decisive engagements. Peer Oestmo, to be sure, had his eye put out by
an arrow, as has already been related, for the East-Siders were not slow
to imitate the example of their enemies, in becoming expert archers.

Marcus Henning was captured by a hostile outpost, and was being
conducted to the abode of the chief, when, by a clever stratagem, he
succeeded in making his escape.

The East-Siders despatched, under a flag of truce, a most insulting
caricature of General Viggo, representing him as a rooster that seemed
on the point of bursting with an excess of dignity.

These were the chief incidents of the winter, though there were many
others of less consequence that served to keep the boys in a delightful
state of excitement. They enjoyed the war keenly, though they pretended
to themselves that they were being ill-used and suffered terrible
hardships. They grumbled at their duties, brought complaints against
their officers to the general, and did, in fact, all the things that
real soldiers would have been likely to do under similar circumstances.




II. THE CLASH OF ARMS

When the spring is late in Norway, and the heat comes with a sudden
rush, the mountain streams plunge with a tremendous noise down into the
valleys, and the air is filled far and near with the boom and roar of
rushing waters. The glaciers groan, and send their milk-white torrents
down toward the ocean. The snow-patches in the forest glens look gray
and soiled, and the pines perspire a delicious resinous odor which
cheers the soul with the conviction that spring has come.

But the peasant looks anxiously at the sun and the river at such times,
for he knows that there is danger of inundation. The lumber, which
the spring floods set afloat in enormous quantities, is carried by the
rivers to the cities by the sea; there it is sorted according to
the mark it bears, showing the proprietor, and exported to foreign
countries.

In order to prevent log-jams, which are often attended with terrible
disasters, men are stationed night and day at the narrows of the rivers.
The boys, to whom all excitement is welcome, are apt to congregate in
large numbers at such places, assisting or annoying the watchers, riding
on the logs, or teasing the girls who stand up on the hillside, admiring
the daring feats of the lumbermen.

It was on such a spring day, when the air was pungent with the smell
of sprouting birch and pine, that General Viggo and his trusty army
had betaken themselves to the cataract to share in the sport. They were
armed with their bows, as usual, knowing that they were always liable
to be surprised by their vigilant enemy. Nor were they in this instance
disappointed, for Halvor Reitan, with fifty or sixty followers, was
presently visible on the east side, and it was a foregone conclusion
that if they met there would be a battle.

The river, to be sure, separated them, but the logs were at times so
densely packed that it was possible for a daring lad to run far out into
the river, shoot his arrow and return to shore, leaping from log to log.
The Reitan party was the first to begin this sport, and an arrow hit
General Viggo’s hat before he gave orders to repel the assault.

Cool and dignified as he was, he could not consent to skip and jump
on the slippery logs, particularly as he had no experience in this
difficult exercise, while the enemy apparently had much. Paying no heed
to the jeers of the lumbermen, who supposed he was afraid, he drew his
troops up in line and addressed them as follows:

“Soldiers: You have on many previous occasions given me proof of your
fidelity to duty and your brave and fearless spirit. I know that I can,
now as always, trust you to shed glory upon our arms, and to maintain
our noble fame and honorable traditions.

“The enemy is before us. You have heard and seen his challenge. It
behooves us to respond gallantly. To jump and skip like rabbits is
unmilitary and unsoldierlike. I propose that each of us shall select two
large logs, tie them together, procure, if possible, a boat-hook or an
oar, and, sitting astride the logs, boldly push out into the river. If
we can advance in a tolerably even line, which I think quite possible,
we can send so deadly a charge into the ranks of our adversaries that
they will be compelled to flee. Then we will land on the east side,
occupy the heights, and rout our foe.

“Now let each man do his duty. Forward, march!”

The lumbermen, whose sympathies were with the East-Siders, found this
performance highly diverting, but Viggo allowed himself in nowise to be
disturbed by their laughter or jeers. He marched his troops down to
the river-front, commanded “Rest arms!” and repeated once more his
instructions; then, flinging off his coat and waistcoat, he seized a
boat-hook and ran some hundred yards along the bank of the stream.

The river-bed was here expanded to a wide basin, in which the logs
floated lazily down to the cataract below. Trees and underbrush, which
usually stood on dry land, were half-submerged in the yellow water,
and the current gurgled slowly about their trunks with muddy foam and
bubbles. Now and then a heap of lumber would get wedged in between the
jutting rocks above the waterfall, and then the current slackened, only
to be suddenly accelerated, when the exertions of the men had again
removed the obstruction.

It was an exciting spectacle to see these daring fellows leap from log
to log, with birch-bark shoes on their feet. They would ride on a heap
of lumber down to the very edge of the cataract, dexterously jump off
at the critical moment, and after half a dozen narrow escapes, reach
the shore, only to repeat the dangerous experiment, as soon as the next
opportunity offered itself.

It was the example of these hardy and agile lumbermen, trained from
childhood to sport with danger, which inspired Viggo and his followers
with a desire to show their mettle.

“Sergeant Henning,” said the General to his ever-faithful shadow, “take
a squad of five men with you, and cut steering-poles for those for whom
boat-hooks cannot be procured. You will be the last to leave shore.
Report to me if any one fails to obey orders.”

“Shall be done, General,” Marcus responded, with a deferential military
salute.

“The bows, you understand, will be slung by the straps across the backs
of the men, while they steer and push with their poles.”

“Certainly, General,” said Marcus, with another salute.

“You may go.”

“All right, General,” answered Marcus, with a third salute.

And now began the battle. The East-Siders, fearing that a stratagem was
intended, when they saw the enemy moving up the stream, made haste to
follow their example, capturing on their way every stray log that came
along. They sent ineffectual showers of arrows into the water, while the
brave General Viggo, striding two big logs which he had tied together
with a piece of rope, and with a boat-hook in his hand, pushed proudly
at the head of his army into the middle of the wide basin.

Halvor Reitan was clever enough to see what it meant, and he was not
going to allow the West-Siders to gain the heights above him, and attack
him in the rear. He meant to prevent the enemy from landing, or, still
better, he would meet him half-way, and drive him back to his own shore.

The latter, though not the wiser course, was the plan which Halvor
Reitan adopted. To have a tussle with the high-nosed Viggo in the middle
of the basin, to dislodge him from his raft--that seemed to Halvor a
delightful project. He knew that Viggo was a good swimmer, so he
feared no dangerous consequences; and even if he had, it would not have
restrained him. He was so much stronger than Viggo, and here was his
much-longed-for opportunity.

With great despatch he made himself a raft of two logs, and seating
himself astride them, with his legs in the water, put off from shore. He
shouted to his men to follow him, and they needed no urging. Viggo was
now near the middle of the basin, with twenty or thirty picked archers
close behind him. They fired volley after volley of arrows against the
enemy, and twice drove him back to the shore.

But Halvor Reitan, shielding his face with a piece of bark which he had
picked up, pushed forward in spite of their onslaught, though one arrow
knocked off his red-peaked cap, and another scratched his ear. Now he
was but a dozen feet from his foe. He cared little for his bow now; the
boat-hook was a far more effectual weapon.

Viggo saw at a glance that he meant to pull his raft toward him, and,
relying upon his greater strength, fling him into the water.

His first plan would therefore be to fence with his own boat-hook, so as
to keep his antagonist at a distance.

When Halvor made the first lunge at the nose of his raft, he foiled the
attempt with his own weapon, and managed dexterously to give the hostile
raft a downward push, which increased the distance between them.

“Take care, General!” said a respectful voice close to Viggo’s ear.
“There is a small log jam down below, which is getting bigger every
moment. When it is got afloat, it will be dangerous out here.”

“What are you doing here, Sergeant?” asked the General, severely. “Did I
not tell you to be the last to leave the shore?”

“You did, General,” Marcus replied, meekly, “and I obeyed. But I have
pushed to the front so as to be near you.”

“I don’t need you, Sergeant,” Viggo responded, “you may go to the rear.”

The booming of the cataract nearly drowned his voice and Marcus
pretended not to hear it. A huge lumber mass was piling itself up among
the rocks jutting out of the rapids, and a dozen men hanging like flies
on the logs, sprang up and down with axes in their hands. They cut one
log here and another there; shouted commands; and fell into the river
amid the derisive jeers of the spectators; they scrambled out again and,
dripping wet, set to work once more with a cheerful heart, to the mighty
music of the cataract, whose thundering rhythm trembled and throbbed in
the air.

The boys who were steering their rafts against each other in the
comparatively placid basin were too absorbed in their mimic battle to
heed what was going on below. Halvor and Viggo were fighting desperately
with their boat-hooks, the one attacking and the other defending himself
with great dexterity. They scarcely perceived, in their excitement, that
the current was dragging them slowly toward the cataract; nor did they
note the warning cries of the men and women on the banks.

Viggo’s blood was hot, his temples throbbed, his eyes flashed. He would
show this miserable clown who had dared to insult him, that the trained
skill of a gentleman is worth more than the rude strength of a bully.
With beautiful precision he foiled every attack; struck Halvor’s
boat-hook up and down, so that the water splashed about him, manoeuvring
at the same time his own raft with admirable adroitness.

Cheer upon cheer rent the air, after each of his successful sallies,
and his comrades, selecting their antagonists from among the enemy, now
pressed forward, all eager to bear their part in the fray.

Splash! splash! splash! one East-Sider was dismounted, got an
involuntary bath, but scrambled up on his raft again. The next time it
was a West-Sider who got a ducking, but seemed none the worse for it.
There was a yelling and a cheering, now from one side and now from the
other, which made everyone forget that something was going on at that
moment of greater importance than the mimic warfare of boys.

All the interest of the contending parties was concentrated on the duel
of their chieftains. It seemed now really that Halvor was getting the
worst of it. He could not get close enough to use his brawny muscles;
and in precision of aim and adroitness of movement he was not Viggo’s
match.

Again and again he thrust his long-handled boat-hook angrily against the
bottom (for the flooded parts of the banks were very shallow), to push
the raft forward, but every time Viggo managed to turn it sideward, and
Halvor had to exert all his presence of mind to keep his seat. Wild with
rage he sprang up on his slender raft and made a vicious lunge at his
opponent, who warded the blow with such force that the handle of the
boat-hook broke, and Halvor lost his balance and fell into the water.

At this same instant a tremendous crash was heard from below, followed
by a long rumble as of mighty artillery. A scream of horror went up
from the banks, as the great lumber mass rolled down into the cataract,
making a sudden suction which it seemed impossible that the unhappy boys
could resist.

The majority of both sides, seeing their danger, beat, by means of their
boat-hooks, a hasty retreat, and as they were in shallow water were
hauled ashore by the lumbermen, who sprang into the river to save them.

When the clouds of spray had cleared away, only three figures were
visible. Viggo, still astride of his raft, was fighting, not for his own
life, but for that of his enemy, Halvor, who was struggling helplessly
in the white rapids. Close behind his commander stood little Marcus on
his raft, holding on, with one hand to the boat-hook which he had hewn,
with all his might, into Viggo’s raft, and with the other grasping the
branch of a half-submerged tree.

“Save yourself, General!” he yelled, wildly. “Let go there. I can’t hold
on much longer.”

But Viggo did not heed. He saw nothing but the pale, frightened face
of his antagonist, who might lose his life. With a desperate effort he
flung his boat-hook toward him and succeeded this time in laying hold
of the leather girdle about his waist. One hundred feet below yawned the
foaming, weltering abyss, from which the white smoke ascended. If Marcus
lost his grip, if the branch snapped no human power could save them;
they were all dead men.

By this time the people on the shore had discovered that three lives
were hanging on the brink of eternity. Twenty men had waded waist-deep
into the current and had flung a stout rope to the noble little fellow
who was risking his own life for his friend.

“Keep your hold, my brave lad!” they cried; “hold on another minute!”

“Grab the rope!” screamed others.

Marcus clinched his teeth, and his numb arms trembled, mist gathered
in his eyes--his heart stood still. But with a clutch that seemed
superhuman he held on. He had but one thought--Viggo, his chief! Viggo,
his idol! Viggo, his general! He must save him or die with him. One end
of the rope was hanging on the branch and was within easy reach; but he
did not venture to seize it, lest the wrench caused by his motion might
detach his hold on Viggo’s raft.

Viggo, who just now was pulling Halvor out of the water, saw in an
instant that he had by adding his weight to the raft, increased the
chance of both being carried to their death. With quick resolution he
plunged the beak of his own boat-hook into Marcus’s raft, and shouted to
Halvor to save himself. The latter, taking in the situation at a glance,
laid hold of the handle of the boat-hook and together they pulled up
alongside of Marcus and leaped aboard his raft, whereupon Viggo’s raft
drifted downward and vanished in a flash in the yellow torrent.

At that very instant Marcus’s strength gave out; he relaxed his grip on
the branch, which slid out of his hand, and they would inevitably have
darted over the brink of the cataract if Viggo had not, with great
adroitness, snatched the rope from the branch of the half-submerged
tree.

A wild shout, half a cheer, half a cry of relief, went up from the
banks, as the raft with the three lads was slowly hauled toward the
shore by the lumbermen who had thrown the rope.

Halvor Reitan was the first to step ashore. But no joyous welcome
greeted him from those whose sympathies had, a little while ago, been
all on his side. He hung around uneasily for some minutes, feeling
perhaps that he ought to say something to Viggo who had saved his life,
but as he could not think of anything which did not seem foolish, he
skulked away unnoticed toward the edge of the forest.

But when Viggo stepped ashore, carrying the unconscious Marcus in his
arms, how the crowd rushed forward to gaze at him, to press his hands,
to call down God’s blessing upon him! He had never imagined that he was
such a hero. It was Marcus, not he, to whom their ovation was due. But
poor Marcus--it was well for him that he had fainted from over-exertion;
for otherwise he would have fainted from embarrassment at the honors
which would have been showered upon him.

The West-Siders, marching two abreast, with their bows slung across
their shoulders, escorted their general home, cheering and shouting as
they went. When they were half-way up the hillside, Marcus opened his
eyes, and finding himself so close to his beloved general, blushed
crimson, scarlet, and purple, and all the other shades that an
embarrassed blush is capable of assuming.

“Please, General,” he stammered, “don’t bother about me.”

Viggo had thought of making a speech exalting the heroism of his
faithful follower. But he saw at a glance that his praise would be more
grateful to Marcus, if he received it in private.

When, however, the boys gave him a parting cheer, in front of his
father’s mansion, he forgot his resolution, leaped up on the steps, and
lifting the blushing Marcus above his head; called out:

“Three cheers for the bravest boy in Norway!”




BICEPS GRIMLUND’S CHRISTMAS VACATION




I.

The great question which Albert Grimlund was debating was fraught
with unpleasant possibilities. He could not go home for the Christmas
vacation, for his father lived in Drontheim, which is so far away from
Christiania that it was scarcely worth while making the journey for
a mere two-weeks’ holiday. Then, on the other hand, he had an old
great-aunt who lived but a few miles from the city. She had, from
conscientious motives, he feared, sent him an invitation to pass
Christmas with her. But Albert had a poor opinion of Aunt Elsbeth.
He thought her a very tedious person. She had a dozen cats, talked
of nothing but sermons and lessons, and asked him occasionally, with
pleasant humor, whether he got many whippings at school. She failed to
comprehend that a boy could not amuse himself forever by looking at
the pictures in the old family Bible, holding yarn, and listening to
oft-repeated stories, which he knew by heart, concerning the doings and
sayings of his grandfather. Aunt Elsbeth, after a previous experience
with her nephew, had come to regard boys as rather a reprehensible kind
of animal, who differed in many of their ways from girls, and altogether
to the boys’ disadvantage.

Now, the prospect of being “caged” for two weeks with this estimable
lady was, as I said, not at all pleasant to Albert. He was sixteen years
old, loved out-door sports, and had no taste for cats. His chief pride
was his muscle, and no boy ever made his acquaintance without being
invited to feel the size and hardness of his biceps. This was a standing
joke in the Latin school, and Albert was generally known among his
companions as “Biceps” Grimlund. He was not very tall for his age, but
broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with something in his glance, his
gait, and his manners which showed that he had been born and bred near
the sea. He cultivated a weather-beaten complexion, and was particularly
proud when the skin “peeled” on his nose, which it usually did in the
summer-time, during his visits to his home in the extreme north. Like
most blond people, when sunburnt, he was red, not brown; and this became
a source of great satisfaction when he learned that Lord Nelson had
the same peculiarity. Albert’s favorite books were the sea romances of
Captain Marryat, whose “Peter Simple” and “Midshipman Easy” he held to
be the noblest products of human genius. It was a bitter disappointment
to him that his father forbade his going to sea and was educating him
to be a “landlubber,” which he had been taught by his boy associates to
regard as the most contemptible thing on earth.

Two days before Christmas, Biceps Grimlund was sitting in his room,
looking gloomily out of the window. He wished to postpone as long as
possible his departure for Aunt Elsbeth’s country-place, for he foresaw
that both he and she were doomed to a surfeit of each other’s company
during the coming fortnight. At last he heaved a deep sigh and languidly
began to pack his trunk. He had just disposed the dear Marryat books on
top of his starched shirts, when he heard rapid footsteps on the stairs,
and the next moment the door burst open, and his classmate, Ralph Hoyer,
rushed breathlessly into the room.

“Biceps,” he cried, “look at this! Here is a letter from my father, and
he tells me to invite one of my classmates to come home with me for the
vacation. Will you come? Oh, we shall have grand times, I tell you! No
end of fun!”

Albert, instead of answering, jumped up and danced a jig on the floor,
upsetting two chairs and breaking the wash-pitcher.

“Hurrah!” he cried, “I’m your man. Shake hands on it, Ralph! You have
saved me from two weeks of cats and yarn and moping! Give us your paw! I
never was so glad to see anybody in all my life.”

And to prove it, he seized Ralph by the shoulders, gave him a vigorous
whirl and forced him to join in the dance.

“Now, stop your nonsense,” Ralph protested, laughing; “if you have so
much strength to waste, wait till we are at home in Solheim, and you’ll
have a chance to use it profitably.”

Albert flung himself down on his old rep-covered sofa. It seemed to
have some internal disorder, for its springs rattled and a vague musical
twang indicated that something or other had snapped. It had seen much
maltreatment, that poor old piece of furniture, and bore visible marks
of it. When, after various exhibitions of joy, their boisterous delight
had quieted down, both boys began to discuss their plans for the
vacation.

“But I fear my groom may freeze, down there in the street,” Ralph
ejaculated, cutting short the discussion; “it is bitter cold, and he
can’t leave the horses. Hurry up, now, old man, and I’ll help you pack.”

It did not take them long to complete the packing. Albert sent a
telegram to his father, asking permission to accept Ralph’s invitation;
but, knowing well that the reply would be favorable, did not think
it necessary to wait for it. With the assistance of his friend he
now wrapped himself in two overcoats, pulled a pair of thick woollen
stockings over the outside of his boots and a pair of fur-lined
top-boots outside of these, girded himself with three long scarfs, and
pulled his brown otter-skin cap down over his ears. He was nearly
as broad as he was long, when he had completed these operations, and
descended into the street where the big double-sleigh (made in the shape
of a huge white swan) was awaiting them. They now called at Ralph’s
lodgings, whence he presently emerged in a similar Esquimau costume,
wearing a wolf-skin coat which left nothing visible except the tip of
his nose and the steam of his breath. Then they started off merrily with
jingling bells, and waved a farewell toward many a window, wherein were
friends and acquaintances. They felt in so jolly a mood, that they could
not help shouting their joy in the face of all the world, and crowing
over all poor wretches who were left to spend the holidays in the city.




II.

Solheim was about twenty miles from the city, and it was nine o’clock in
the evening when the boys arrived there. The moon was shining brightly,
and the Milky Way, with its myriad stars, looked like a luminous mist
across the vault of the sky. The aurora borealis swept down from the
north with white and pink radiations which flushed the dark blue sky for
an instant, and vanished. The earth was white, as far as the eye could
reach--splendidly, dazzlingly white. And out of the white radiance rose
the great dark pile of masonry called Solheim, with its tall chimneys
and dormer-windows and old-fashioned gables. Round about stood the tall
leafless maples and chestnut-trees, sparkling with frost and stretching
their gaunt arms against the heavens. The two horses, when they swung
up before the great front-door, were so white with hoar-frost that they
looked shaggy like goats, and no one could tell what was their original
color. Their breath was blown in two vapory columns from their nostrils
and drifted about their heads like steam about a locomotive.

The sleigh-bells had announced the arrival of the guests, and a great
shout of welcome was heard from the hall of the house, which seemed
alive with grownup people and children. Ralph jumped out of the sleigh,
embraced at random half a dozen people, one of whom was his mother,
kissed right and left, protesting laughingly against being smothered
in affection, and finally managed to introduce his friend, who for the
moment was feeling a trifle lonely.

“Here, father,” he cried. “Biceps, this is my father; and, father, this
is my Biceps----”

“What stuff you are talking, boy,” his father exclaimed. “How can this
young fellow be your biceps----”

“Well, how can a man keep his senses in such confusion?” said the son
of the house. “This is my friend and classmate, Albert Grimlund, alias
Biceps Grimlund, and the strongest man in the whole school. Just feel
his biceps, mother, and you’ll see.”

“No, I thank you. I’ll take your word for it,” replied Mrs. Hoyer. “As
I intend to treat him as a friend of my son should be treated, I hope he
will not feel inclined to give me any proof of his muscularity.”

When, with the aid of the younger children, the travellers had divested
themselves of their various wraps and overcoats, they were ushered
into the old-fashioned sitting-room. In one corner roared an enormous,
many-storied, iron stove. It had a picture in relief, on one side, of
Diana the Huntress, with her nymphs and baying hounds. In the middle of
the room stood a big table, and in the middle of the table a big
lamp, about which the entire family soon gathered. It was so cosey and
homelike that Albert, before he had been half an hour in the room, felt
gratefully the atmosphere of mutual affection which pervaded the house.
It amused him particularly to watch the little girls, of whom there were
six, and to observe their profound admiration for their big brother.
Every now and then one of them, sidling up to him while he sat talking,
would cautiously touch his ear or a curl of his hair; and if he deigned
to take any notice of her, offering her, perhaps, a perfunctory kiss,
her pride and pleasure were charming to witness.

Presently the signal was given that supper was ready, and various savory
odors, which escaped, whenever a door was opened, served to arouse the
anticipations of the boys to the highest pitch. Now, if I did not have
so much else to tell you, I should stop here and describe that supper.
There were twenty-two people who sat down to it; but that was nothing
unusual at Solheim, for it was a hospitable house, where every wayfarer
was welcome, either to the table in the servants’ hall or to the
master’s table in the dining-room.




III.

At the stroke of ten all the family arose, and each in turn kissed the
father and mother good-night; whereupon Mr. Hoyer took the great lamp
from the table and mounted the stairs, followed by his pack of noisy
boys and girls. Albert and Ralph found themselves, with four smaller
Hoyers, in an enormous low-ceiled room with many windows. In three
corners stood huge canopied bedsteads, with flowered-chintz curtains and
mountainous eiderdown coverings which swelled up toward the ceiling. In
the middle of the wall, opposite the windows, a big iron stove, like
the one in the sitting-room (only that it was adorned with a bunch of
flowers, peaches, and grapes, and not with Diana and her nymphs), was
roaring merrily, and sending a long red sheen from its draught-hole
across the floor.

Around the big warm stove the boys gathered (for it was positively
Siberian in the region of the windows), and while undressing played
various pranks upon each other, which created much merriment. But
the most laughter was provoked at the expense of Finn Hoyer, a boy of
fourteen, whose bare back his brother insisted upon exhibiting to his
guest; for it was decorated with a facsimile of the picture on the
stove, showing roses and luscious peaches and grapes in red relief.
Three years before, on Christmas Eve, the boys had stood about the
red-hot stove, undressing for their bath, and Finn, who was naked, had,
in the general scrimmage to get first into the bath-tub, been
pushed against the glowing iron, the ornamentation of which had been
beautifully burned upon his back. He had to be wrapped in oil and cotton
after that adventure, and he recovered in due time, but never quite
relished the distinction he had acquired by his pictorial skin.

It was long before Albert fell asleep; for the cold kept up a continual
fusillade, as of musketry, during the entire night. The woodwork of the
walls snapped and cracked with loud reports; and a little after midnight
a servant came in and stuffed the stove full of birch-wood, until it
roared like an angry lion. This roar finally lulled Albert to sleep, in
spite of the startling noises about him.

The next morning the boys were aroused at seven o’clock by a servant,
who brought a tray with the most fragrant coffee and hot rolls. It was
in honor of the guest that, in accordance with Norse custom, this
early meal was served; and all the boys, carrying pillows and blankets,
gathered on Albert’s and Ralph’s bed and feasted right royally. So it
seemed to them, at least; for any break in the ordinary routine, be it
ever so slight, is an event to the young. Then they had a pillow-fight,
thawed at the stove the water in the pitchers (for it was frozen hard),
and arrayed themselves to descend and meet the family at the nine
o’clock breakfast. When this repast was at an end, the question arose
how they were to entertain their guest, and various plans were proposed.
But to all Ralph’s propositions his mother interposed the objection that
it was too cold.

“Mother is right,” said Mr. Hoyer; “it is so cold that ‘the chips jump
on the hill-side.’ You’ll have to be content with indoor sports to-day.”

“But, father, it is not more than twenty degrees below zero,” the boy
demurred. “I am sure we can stand that, if we keep in motion. I have
been out at thirty without losing either ears or nose.”

He went to the window to observe the thermometer; but the dim daylight
scarcely penetrated the fantastic frost-crystals, which, like a splendid
exotic flora, covered the panes. Only at the upper corner, where the ice
had commenced to thaw, a few timid sunbeams were peeping in, making the
lamp upon the table seem pale and sickly. Whenever the door to the hall
was opened a white cloud of vapor rolled in; and every one made haste
to shut the door, in order to save the precious heat. The boys, being
doomed to remain indoors, walked about restlessly, felt each other’s
muscle, punched each other, and sometimes, for want of better
employment, teased the little girls. Mr. Hoyer, seeing how miserable
they were, finally took pity on them, and, after having thawed out
a window-pane sufficiently to see the thermometer outside, gave his
consent to a little expedition on skees [2] down to the river.

And now, boys, you ought to have seen them! Now there was life in them!
You would scarcely have dreamed that they were the same creatures who,
a moment ago, looked so listless and miserable. What rollicking laughter
and fun, while they bundled one another in scarfs, cardigan-jackets,
fur-lined top-boots, and overcoats!

“You had better take your guns along, boys,” said the father, as they
stormed out through the front door; “you might strike a couple of
ptarmigan, or a mountain-cock, over on the west side.”

“I am going to take your rifle, if you’ll let me,” Ralph exclaimed. “I
have a fancy we might strike bigger game than mountain-cock. I shouldn’t
object to a wolf or two.”

“You are welcome to the rifle,” said his father; “but I doubt whether
you’ll find wolves on the ice so early in the day.”

Mr. Hoyer took the rifle from its case, examined it carefully, and
handed it to Ralph. Albert, who was a less experienced hunter than
Ralph, preferred a fowling-piece to the rifle; especially as he had
no expectation of shooting anything but ptarmigan. Powder-horns,
cartridges, and shot were provided; and quite proudly the two friends
started off on their skees, gliding over the hard crust of the snow,
which, as the sun rose higher, was oversown with thousands of glittering
gems. The boys looked like Esquimaux, with their heads bundled up in
scarfs, and nothing visible except their eyes and a few hoary locks of
hair which the frost had silvered.




IV.

“What was that?” cried Albert, startled by a sharp report which
reverberated from the mountains. They had penetrated the forest on the
west side, and ranged over the ice for an hour, in a vain search for
wolves.

“Hush,” said Ralph, excitedly; and after a moment of intent listening he
added, “I’ll be drawn and quartered if it isn’t poachers!”

“How do you know?”

“These woods belong to father, and no one else has any right to hunt in
them. He doesn’t mind if a poor man kills a hare or two, or a brace of
ptarmigan; but these chaps are after elk; and if the old gentleman gets
on the scent of elk-hunters, he has no more mercy than Beelzebub.”

“How can you know that they are after elk?”

“No man is likely to go to the woods for small game on a day like this.
They think the cold protects them from pursuit and capture.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I am going to play a trick on them. You know that the sheriff, whose
duty it is to be on the lookout for elk-poachers, would scarcely send
out a posse when the cold is so intense. Elk, you know, are becoming
very scarce, and the law protects them. No man is allowed to shoot more
than one elf a year, and that one on his own property. Now, you and
I will play deputy-sheriffs, and have those poachers securely in the
lock-up before night.”

“But suppose they fight?”

“Then we’ll fight back.”

Ralph was so aglow with joyous excitement at the thought of this
adventure, that Albert had not the heart to throw cold water on his
enthusiasm. Moreover, he was afraid of being thought cowardly by his
friend if he offered objections. The recollection of Midshipman Easy
and his daring pranks flashed through his brain, and he felt an
instant desire to rival the exploits of his favorite hero. If only the
enterprise had been on the sea he would have been twice as happy, for
the land always seemed to him a prosy and inconvenient place for the
exhibition of heroism.

“But, Ralph,” he exclaimed, now more than ready to bear his part in
the expedition, “I have only shot in my gun. You can’t shoot men with
bird-shot.”

“Shoot men! Are you crazy? Why, I don’t intend to shoot anybody.
I only wish to capture them. My rifle is a breech-loader and has six
cartridges. Besides, it has twice the range of theirs (for there isn’t
another such rifle in all Odalen), and by firing one shot over their
heads I can bring them to terms, don’t you see?”

Albert, to be frank, did not see it exactly; but he thought it best to
suppress his doubts. He scented danger in the air, and his blood bounded
through his veins.

“How do you expect to track them?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Skee-tracks in the snow can be seen by a bat, born blind,” answered
Ralph, recklessly.

They were now climbing up the wooded slope on the western side of the
river. The crust of the frozen snow was strong enough to bear them;
and as it was not glazed, but covered with an inch of hoar-frost, it
retained the imprint of their feet with distinctness. They were obliged
to carry their skees, on account both of the steepness of the slope and
the density of the underbrush. Roads and paths were invisible under
the white pall of the snow, and only the facility with which they could
retrace their steps saved them from the fear of going astray. Through
the vast forest a deathlike silence reigned; and this silence was not
made up of an infinity of tiny sounds, like the silence of a summer
day when the crickets whirr in the treetops and the bees drone in the
clover-blossoms. No; this silence was dead, chilling, terrible. The huge
pine-trees now and then dropped a load of snow on the heads of the bold
intruders, and it fell with a thud, followed by a noiseless, glittering
drizzle. As far as their eyes could reach, the monotonous colonnade
of brown tree-trunks, rising out of the white waste, extended in all
directions. It reminded them of the enchanted forest in “Undine,”
 through which a man might ride forever without finding the end. It was
a great relief when, from time to time, they met a squirrel out foraging
for pine-cones or picking up a scanty living among the husks of last
year’s hazel-nuts. He was lively in spite of the weather, and the
faint noises of his small activities fell gratefully upon ears already
ap-palled by the awful silence. Occasionally they scared up a brace
of grouse that seemed half benumbed, and hopped about in a melancholy
manner under the pines, or a magpie, drawing in its head and ruffling up
its feathers against the cold, until it looked frowsy and disreputable.

“Biceps,” whispered Ralph, who had suddenly discovered something
interesting in the snow, “do you see that?”

“Je-rusalem!” ejaculated Albert, with thoughtless delight, “it is a
hoof-track!”

“Hold your tongue, you blockhead,” warned his friend, too excited to be
polite, “or you’ll spoil the whole business!”

“But you asked me,” protested Albert, in a huff.

“But I didn’t shout, did I?”

Again the report of a shot tore a great rent in the wintry stillness and
rang out with sharp reverberations.

“We’ve got them,” said Ralph, examining the lock of his rifle. “That
shot settles them.”

“If we don’t look out, they may get us instead,” grumbled Albert, who
was still offended.

Ralph stood peering into the underbrush, his eyes as wild as those of
an Indian, his nostrils dilated, and all his senses intensely awake. His
companion, who was wholly unskilled in woodcraft, could see no cause for
his agitation, and feared that he was yet angry. He did not detect the
evidences of large game in the immediate neighborhood. He did not see,
by the bend of the broken twigs and the small tufts of hair on the
briar-bush, that an elk had pushed through that very copse within a few
minutes; nor did he sniff the gamy odor with which the large beast had
charged the air. In obedience to his friend’s gesture, he flung himself
down on hands and knees and cautiously crept after him through the
thicket. He now saw without difficulty a place where the elk had broken
through the snow crust, and he could also detect a certain aimless
bewilderment in the tracks, owing, no doubt, to the shot and the
animal’s perception of danger on two sides. Scarcely had he crawled
twenty feet when he was startled by a noise of breaking branches, and
before he had time to cock his gun, he saw an enormous bull-elk tearing
through the underbrush, blowing two columns of steam from his nostrils,
and steering straight toward them. At the same instant Ralph’s rifle
blazed away, and the splendid beast, rearing on its hind legs, gave a
wild snort, plunged forward and rolled on its side in the snow. Quick
as a flash the young hunter had drawn his knife, and, in accordance with
the laws of the chase, had driven it into the breast of the animal. But
the glance from the dying eyes--that glance, of which every elk-hunter
can tell a moving tale--pierced the boy to the very heart! It was such
a touching, appealing, imploring glance, so soft and gentle and
unresentful.

“Why did you harm me,” it seemed to say, “who never harmed any living
thing--who claimed only the right to live my frugal life in the forest,
digging up the frozen mosses under the snow, which no mortal creature
except myself can eat?”

The sanguinary instinct--the fever for killing, which every boy inherits
from savage ancestors--had left Ralph, before he had pulled the knife
from the bleeding wound. A miserable feeling of guilt stole over him.
He never had shot an elk before; and his father, who was anxious to
preserve the noble beasts from destruction, had not availed himself of
his right to kill one for many years. Ralph had, indeed, many a time
hunted rabbits, hares, mountain-cock, and capercaillie. But they had
never destroyed his pleasure by arousing pity for their deaths; and he
had always regarded himself as being proof against sentimental emotions.

“Look here, Biceps,” he said, flinging the knife into the snow, “I wish
I hadn’t killed that bull.”

“I thought we were hunting for poachers,” answered Albert, dubiously;
“and now we have been poaching ourselves.”

“By Jiminy! So we have; and I never once thought of it,” cried the
valiant hunter. “I am afraid we are off my father’s preserves too. It
is well the deputy sheriffs are not abroad, or we might find ourselves
decorated with iron bracelets before night.”

“But what did you do it for?”

“Well, I can’t tell. It’s in the blood, I fancy. The moment I saw the
track and caught the wild smell, I forgot all about the poachers, and
started on the scent like a hound.”

The two boys stood for some minutes looking at the dead animal, not with
savage exultation, but with a dim regret. The blood which was gushing
from the wound in the breast froze in a solid lump the very moment it
touched the snow, although the cold had greatly moderated since the
morning.

“I suppose we’ll have to skin the fellow,” remarked Ralph, lugubriously;
“it won’t do to leave that fine carcass for the wolves to celebrate
Christmas with.”

“All right,” Albert answered, “I am not much of a hand at skinning, but
I’ll do the best I can.”

They fell to work rather reluctantly at the unwonted task, but had not
proceeded far when they perceived that they had a full day’s job before
them.

“I’ve no talent for the butcher’s trade,” Ralph exclaimed in disgust,
dropping his knife into the snow. “There’s no help for it, Biceps, we’ll
have to bury the carcass, pile some logs on the top of it, and send a
horse to drag it home to-morrow. If it were not Christmas Eve to-night
we might take a couple of men along and shoot a dozen wolves or more.
For there is sure to be pandemonium here before long, and a concert in
G-flat that’ll curdle the marrow of your bones with horror.”

“Thanks,” replied the admirer of Midshipman Easy, striking a reckless
naval attitude. “The marrow of my bones is not so easily curdled. I’ve
been on a whaling voyage, which is more than you have.”

Ralph was about to vindicate his dignity by referring to his own valiant
exploits, when suddenly his keen eyes detected a slight motion in the
underbrush on the slope below.

“Biceps,” he said, with forced composure, “those poachers are tracking
us.”

“What do you mean?” asked Albert, in vague alarm.

“Do you see the top of that young birch waving?”

“Well, what of that!”

“Wait and see. It’s no good trying to escape. They can easily overtake
us. The snow is the worst tell-tale under the sun.”

“But why should we wish to escape? I thought we were going to catch
them.”

“So we were; but that was before we turned poachers ourselves. Now those
fellows will turn the tables on us--take us to the sheriff and collect
half the fine, which is fifty dollars, as informers.”

“Je-rusalem!” cried Biceps, “isn’t it a beautiful scrape we’ve gotten
into?”

“Rather,” responded his friend, coolly.

“But why meekly allow ourselves to be captured? Why not defend
ourselves?”

“My dear Biceps, you don’t know what you are talking about. Those
fellows don’t mind putting a bullet into you, if you run. Now,
I’d rather pay fifty dollars any day, than shoot a man even in
self-defence.”

“But they have killed elk too. We heard them shoot twice. Suppose we
play the same game on them that they intend to play on us. We can play
informers too, then we’ll at least be quits.”

“Biceps, you are a brick! That’s a capital idea! Then let us start for
the sheriff’s; and if we get there first, we’ll inform both on ourselves
and on them. That’ll cancel the fine. Quick, now!”

No persuasions were needed to make Albert bestir himself. He leaped
toward his skees, and following his friend, who was a few rods ahead of
him, started down the slope in a zigzag line, cautiously steering his
way among the tree trunks. The boys had taken their departure none too
soon; for they were scarcely five hundred yards down the declivity,
when they heard behind them loud exclamations and oaths. Evidently the
poachers had stopped to roll some logs (which were lying close by) over
the carcass, probably meaning to appropriate it; and this gave the boys
an advantage, of which they were in great need. After a few moments
they espied an open clearing which sloped steeply down toward the river.
Toward this Ralph had been directing his course; for although it was a
venturesome undertaking to slide down so steep and rugged a hill, he was
determined rather to break his neck than lower his pride, and become the
laughing-stock of the parish.

One more tack through alder copse and juniper jungle--hard indeed,
and terribly vexatious--and he saw with delight the great open slope,
covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at
midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars
were flashing forth with dazzling brilliancy. Ralph stopped, as he
reached the clearing, to give Biceps an opportunity to overtake him; for
Biceps, like all marine animals, moved with less dexterity on the dry
land.

“Ralph,” he whispered breathlessly, as he pushed himself up to his
companion with a vigorous thrust of his skee-staff, “there are two awful
chaps close behind us. I distinctly heard them speak.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Ralph; “now let us see what you are made of!
Don’t take my track, or you may impale me like a roast pig on a spit.
Now, ready!--one, two, three!”

“Hold on there, or I shoot,” yelled a hoarse voice from out of the
underbrush; but it was too late; for at the same instant the two boys
slid out over the steep slope, and, wrapped in a whirl of loose snow,
were scudding at a dizzying speed down the precipitous hill-side. Thump,
thump, thump, they went, where hidden wood-piles or fences obstructed
their path, and out they shot into space, but each time came down firmly
on their feet, and dashed ahead with undiminished ardor. Their calves
ached, the cold air whistled in their ears, and their eyelids became
stiff and their sight half obscured with the hoar-frost that fringed
their lashes. But onward they sped, keeping their balance with wonderful
skill, until they reached the gentler slope which formed the banks of
the great river. Then for the first time Ralph had an opportunity to
look behind him, and he saw two moving whirls of snow darting downward,
not far from his own track. His heart beat in his throat; for those
fellows had both endurance and skill, and he feared that he was no match
for them. But suddenly--he could have yelled with delight--the foremost
figure leaped into the air, turned a tremendous somersault, and, coming
down on his head, broke through the crust of the snow and vanished,
while his skees started on an independent journey down the hill-side.
He had struck an exposed fence-rail, which, abruptly checking his speed,
had sent him flying like a rocket.

The other poacher had barely time to change his course, so as to avoid
the snag; but he was unable to stop and render assistance to his fallen
comrade. The boys, just as they were shooting out upon the ice, saw by
his motions that he was hesitating whether or not he should give up the
chase. He used his staff as a brake for a few moments, so as to retard
his speed; but discovering, perhaps, by the brightening starlight,
that his adversaries were not full-grown men, he took courage, started
forward again, and tried to make up for the time he had lost. If he
could but reach the sheriff’s house before the boys did, he could have
them arrested and collect the informer’s fee, instead of being himself
arrested and fined as a poacher. It was a prize worth racing for! And,
moreover, there were two elks, worth twenty-five dollars apiece, buried
in the snow under logs. These also would belong to the victor! The
poacher dashed ahead, straining every nerve, and reached safely the foot
of the steep declivity. The boys were now but a few hundred yards ahead
of him.

“Hold on there,” he yelled again, “or I shoot!”

He was not within range, but he thought he could frighten the youngsters
into abandoning the race. The sheriff’s house was but a short distance
up the river. Its tall, black chimneys could he seen looming up against
the starlit sky. There was no slope now to accelerate their speed. They
had to peg away for dear life, pushing themselves forward with their
skee-staves, laboring like plough-horses, panting, snorting, perspiring.
Ralph turned his head once more. The poacher was gaining upon them;
there could be no doubt of it. He was within the range of Ralph’s rifle;
and a sturdy fellow he was, who seemed good for a couple of miles yet.
Should Ralph send a bullet over his head to frighten him? No; that
might give the poacher an excuse for sending back a bullet with a less
innocent purpose. Poor Biceps, he was panting and puffing in his heavy
wraps like a steamboat! He did not once open his mouth to speak; but,
exerting his vaunted muscle to the utmost, kept abreast of his friend,
and sometimes pushed a pace or two ahead of him. But it cost him a
mighty effort! And yet the poacher was gaining upon him! They could
see the long broadside of windows in the sheriff’s mansion, ablaze with
Christmas candles. They came nearer and nearer! The church-bells up on
the bend were ringing in the festival. Five minutes more and they would
be at their goal. Five minutes more! Surely they had strength enough
left for that small space of time. So had the poacher, probably! The
question was, which had the most. Then, with a short, sharp resonance,
followed by a long reverberation, a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed
past Ralph’s ear. It was the poacher who had broken the peace. Ralph,
his blood boiling with wrath, came to a sudden stop, flung his rifle to
his cheek and cried, “Drop that gun!”

The poacher, bearing down with all his might on the skee-staff, checked
his speed. In the meanwhile Albert hurried on, seeing that the issue of
the race depended upon him.

“Don’t force me to hurt ye!” shouted the poacher, threateningly, to
Ralph, taking aim once more.

“You can’t,” Ralph shouted back. “You haven’t another shot.”

At that instant sounds of sleigh-bells and voices were heard, and half
a dozen people, startled by the shot, were seen rushing out from the
sheriff’s mansion. Among them was Mr. Bjornerud himself, with one of his
deputies.

“In the name of the law, I command you to cease,” he cried, when he
saw down the two figures in menacing attitudes. But before he could say
another word, some one fell prostrate in the road before him, gasping:

“We have shot an elk; so has that man down on the ice. We give ourselves
up.”

Mr. Bjornerud, making no answer, leaped over the prostrate figure, and,
followed by the deputy, dashed down upon the ice.

“In the name of the law!” he shouted again, and both rifles were
reluctantly lowered.

“I have shot an elk,” cried Ralph, eagerly, “and this man is a poacher,
we heard him shoot.”

“I have killed an elk,” screamed the poacher, in the same moment, “and
so has this fellow.”

The sheriff was too astonished to speak. Never before, in his
experience, had poachers raced for dear life to give themselves into
custody. He feared that they were making sport of him; in that case,
however, he resolved to make them suffer for their audacity.

“You are my prisoners,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “Take them
to the lock-up, Olsen, and handcuff them securely,” he added, turning to
his deputy.

There were now a dozen men--most of them guests and attendants of the
sheriff’s household--standing in a ring about Ralph and the poacher.
Albert, too, had scrambled to his feet and had joined his comrade.

“Will you permit me, Mr. Sheriff,” said Ralph, making the officer his
politest bow, “to send a message to my father, who is probably anxious
about us?”

“And who is your father, young man?” asked the sheriff, not unkindly;
“I should think you were doing him an ill-turn in taking to poaching at
your early age.”

“My father is Mr. Hoyer, of Solheim,” said the boy, not without some
pride in the announcement.

“What--you rascal, you! Are you trying to, play pranks on an old man?”
 cried the officer of the law, grasping Ralph cordially by the hand.
“You’ve grown to be quite a man, since I saw you last. Pardon me for not
recognizing the son of an old neighbor.”

“Allow me to introduce to you my friend, Mr. Biceps--I mean, Mr. Albert
Grimlund.”

“Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Biceps Albert; and now you must
both come and eat the Christmas porridge with us. I’ll send a messenger
to Mr. Hoyer without delay.”

The sheriff, in a jolly mood, and happy to have added to the number of
his Christmas guests, took each of the two young men by the arm, as if
he were going to arrest them, and conducted them through the spacious
front hall into a large cosey room, where, having divested themselves of
their wraps, they told the story of their adventure.

“But, my dear sir,” Mr. Bjornerud exclaimed, “I don’t see how you
managed to go beyond your father’s preserves. You know he bought of
me the whole forest tract, adjoining his own on the south, about three
months ago. So you were perfectly within your rights; for your father
hasn’t killed an elk on his land for three years.”

“If that is the case, Mr. Sheriff,” said Ralph, “I must beg of you to
release the poor fellow who chased us. I don’t wish any informer’s fee,
nor have I any desire to get him into trouble.”

“I am sorry to say I can’t accommodate you,” Bjornerud replied. “This
man is a notorious poacher and trespasser, whom my deputies have long
been tracking in vain. Now that I have him I shall keep him. There’s no
elk safe in Odalen so long as that rascal is at large.”

“That may be; but I shall then turn my informer’s fee over to him, which
will reduce his fine from fifty dollars to twenty-five dollars.”

“To encourage him to continue poaching?”

“Well, I confess I have a little more sympathy with poachers, since
we came so near being poachers ourselves. It was only an accident that
saved us!”




THE NIXY’S STRAIN

Little Nils had an idea that he wanted to be something great in the
world, but he did not quite know how to set about it. He had always been
told that, having been born on a Sunday, he was a luck-child, and that
good fortune would attend him on that account in whatever he undertook.

He had never, so far, noticed anything peculiar about himself, though,
to be sure, his small enterprises did not usually come to grief, his
snares were seldom empty, and his tiny stamping-mill, which he and his
friend Thorstein had worked at so faithfully, was now making a merry
noise over in the brook in the Westmo Glen, so that you could hear it a
hundred yards away.

The reason of this, his mother told him, according to the superstition
of her people, was that the Nixy and the Hulder [3] and the gnomes
favored him because he was a Sunday child. What was more, she assured
him, that he would see them some day, and then, if he conducted himself
cleverly, so as to win their favor, he would, by their aid, rise high in
the world, and make his fortune.

Now this was exactly what Nils wanted, and therefore he was not a
little anxious to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creatures who had so
whimsical a reason for taking an interest in him. Many and many a time
he sat at the waterfall where the Nixy was said to play the harp every
midsummer night, but although he sometimes imagined that he heard a
vague melody trembling through the rush and roar of the water, and saw
glimpses of white limbs flashing through the current, yet never did he
get a good look at the Nixy.

Though he roamed through the woods early and late, setting snares for
birds and rabbits, and was ever on the alert for a sight of the Hulder’s
golden hair and scarlet bodice, the tricksy sprite persisted in eluding
him.

He thought sometimes that he heard a faint, girlish giggle, full of
teasing provocation and suppressed glee, among the underbrush, and once
he imagined that he saw a gleam of scarlet and gold vanish in a dense
alder copse.

But very little good did that do him, when he could not fix the vision,
talk with it face to face, and extort the fulfilment of the three
regulation wishes.

“I am probably not good enough,” thought Nils. “I know I am a selfish
fellow, and cruel, too, some-times, to birds and beasts. I suppose she
won’t have anything to do with me, as long as she isn’t satisfied with
my behavior.”

Then he tried hard to be kind and considerate; smiled at his little
sister when she pulled his hair, patted Sultan, the dog, instead of
kicking him, when he was in his way, and never complained or sulked when
he was sent on errands late at night or in bad weather.

But, strange to say, though the Nixy’s mysterious melody still sounded
vaguely through the water’s roar, and the Hulder seemed to titter behind
the tree-trunks and vanish in the underbrush, a real, unmistakable view
was never vouchsafed to Nils, and the three wishes which were to make
his fortune he had no chance of propounding.

He had fully made up his mind what his wishes were to be, for he was
determined not to be taken by surprise. He knew well the fate of
those foolish persons in the fairy tales who offend their benevolent
protectors by bouncing against them head foremost, as it were, with a
greedy cry for wealth.

Nils was not going to be caught that way. He would ask first for
wisdom--that was what all right-minded heroes did--then for good repute
among men, and lastly--and here was the rub--lastly he was inclined to
ask for a five-bladed knife, like the one the parson’s Thorwald had got
for a Christmas present.

But he had considerable misgiving about the expediency of this last
wish. If he had a fair renown and wisdom, might he not be able to get
along without a five-bladed pocket-knife? But no; there was no help for
it. Without that five-bladed pocket-knife neither wisdom nor fame would
satisfy him. It would be the drop of gall in his cup of joy.

After many days’ pondering, it occurred to him, as a way out of the
difficulty, that it would, perhaps, not offend the Hulder if he asked,
not for wealth, but for a moderate prosperity. If he were blessed with a
moderate prosperity, he could, of course, buy a five-bladed pocket-knife
with corkscrew and all other appurtenances, and still have something
left over.

He had a dreadful struggle with this question, for he was well aware
that the proper things to wish were long life and happiness for his
father and mother, or something in that line. But, though he wished his
father and mother well, he could not make up his mind to forego his own
precious chances on their account. Moreover, he consoled himself with
the reflection that if he attained the goal of his own desires he could
easily bestow upon them, of his bounty, a reasonable prospect of long
life and happiness.

You see Nils was by no means so good yet as he ought to be. He was
clever enough to perceive that he had small chance of seeing the Hulder,
as long as his heart was full of selfishness and envy and greed.

For, strive as he might, he could not help feeling envious of the
parson’s Thorwald, with his elaborate combination pocket-knife and his
silver watch-chain, which he unfeelingly flaunted in the face of an
admiring community. It was small consolation for Nils to know that there
was no watch but only a key attached to it; for a silver watch-chain,
even without a watch, was a sufficiently splendid possession to justify
a boy in fording it over his less fortunate comrades.

Nils’s father, who was a poor charcoal-burner, could never afford to
make his son such a present, even if he worked until he was as black as
a chimney-sweep. For what little money he earned was needed at once for
food and clothes for the family; and there were times when they were
obliged to mix ground birch-bark with their flour in order to make it
last longer.

It was easy enough for a rich man’s son to be good, Nils thought.

It was small credit to him if he was not envious, having never known
want and never gone to bed on birch-bark porridge. But for a poor boy
not to covet all the nice things which would make life so pleasant, if
he had them, seemed next to impossible.

Still Nils kept on making good resolutions and breaking them, and then
piecing them together again and breaking them anew.

If it had not been for his desire to see the Hulder and the Nixy, and
making them promise the fulfilment of the three wishes, he would have
given up the struggle, and resigned himself to being a bad boy because
he was born so. But those teasing glimpses of the Hulder’s scarlet
bodice and golden hair, and the vague snatches of wondrous melody that
rose from the cataract in the silent summer nights, filled his soul with
an intense desire to see the whole Hulder, with her radiant smile and
melancholy eyes, and to hear the whole melody plainly enough to be
written down on paper and learned by heart.

It was with this longing to repeat the few haunting notes that hummed in
his brain that Nils went to the schoolmaster one day and asked him for
the loan of his fiddle. But the schoolmaster, hearing that Nils could
not play, thought his request a foolish one and refused.

Nevertheless, that visit became an important event, and a turning-point
in the boy’s life. For he was moved to confide in the schoolmaster, who
was a kindly old man, and fond of clever boys; and he became interested
in Nils. Though he regarded Nils’s desire to record the Nixy’s strains
as absurd, he offered to teach him to play. There was good stuff in the
lad, he thought, and when he had out-grown his fantastic nonsense, he
might, very likely, make a good fiddler.

Thus it came to pass that the charcoal-burner’s son learned to play
the violin. He had not had half a dozen lessons before he set about
imitating the Nixy’s notes which he had heard in the waterfall.

“It was this way,” he said to the schoolmaster, pressing his ear against
the violin, while he ran the bow lightly over the strings; “or rather it
was this way,” making another ineffectual effort. “No, no, that wasn’t
it, either. It’s no use, schoolmaster: I shall never be able to do it!”
 he cried, flinging the violin on the table and rushing out of the door.

When he returned the next day he was heartily ashamed of his impatience.
To try to catch the Nixy’s notes after half a dozen lessons was, of
course, an absurdity.

The master told him simply to banish such folly from his brain, to apply
himself diligently to his scales, and not to bother himself about the
Nixy.

That seemed to be sound advice and Nils accepted it with contrition.
He determined never to repeat his silly experiment. But when the next
midsummer night came, a wild yearning possessed him, and he stole out
noiselessly into the forest, and sat down on a stone by the river,
listening intently.

For a long while he heard nothing but the monotonous boom of the water
plunging into the deep. But, strangely enough, there was a vague, hushed
rhythm in this thundering roar; and after a while he seemed to hear
a faint strain, ravishingly sweet, which vibrated on the air for an
instant and vanished.

It seemed to steal upon his ear unawares, and the moment he
listened, with a determination to catch it, it was gone. But sweet it
was--inexpressibly sweet.

Let the master talk as much as he liked, catch it he would and catch it
he must. But he must acquire greater skill before he would be able to
render something so delicate and elusive.

Accordingly Nils applied himself with all his might and main to his
music, in the intervals between his work.

He was big enough now to accompany his father to the woods, and help
him pile turf and earth on the heap of logs that were to be burned
to charcoal. He did not see the Hulder face to face, though he was
constantly on the watch for her; but once or twice he thought he saw a
swift flash of scarlet and gold in the underbrush, and again and again
he thought he heard her soft, teasing laughter in the alder copses.
That, too, he imagined he might express in music; and the next time he
got hold of the schoolmaster’s fiddle he quavered away on the fourth
string, but produced nothing that had the remotest resemblance to
melody, much less to that sweet laughter.

He grew so discouraged that he could have wept. He had a wild impulse
to break the fiddle, and never touch another as long as he lived. But he
knew he could not live up to any such resolution. The fiddle was already
too dear to him to be renounced for a momentary whim. But it was like an
unrequited affection, which brought as much sorrow as joy.

There was so much that Nils burned to express; but the fiddle refused to
obey him, and screeched something utterly discordant, as it seemed, from
sheer perversity.

It occurred to Nils again, that unless the Nixy took pity on him and
taught him that marvellous, airy strain he would never catch it. Would
he then ever be good enough to win the favor of the Nixy?

For in the fairy tales it is always the bad people who come to grief,
while the good and merciful ones are somehow rewarded.

It was evidently because he was yet far from being good enough that both
Hulder and Nixy eluded him. Sunday child though he was, there seemed to
be small chance that he would ever be able to propound his three wishes.

Only now, the third wish was no longer a five-bladed pocket-knife, but
a violin of so fine a ring and delicate modulation that it might render
the Nixy’s strain.

While these desires and fancies fought in his heart, Nils grew to be a
young man; and he still was, what he had always been--a charcoal-burner.
He went to the parson for half a year to prepare for confirmation; and
by his gentleness and sweetness of disposition attracted not only the
good man himself, but all with whom he came in contact. His answers were
always thoughtful, and betrayed a good mind.

He was not a prig, by any means, who held aloof from sport and play; he
could laugh with the merriest, run a race with the swiftest, and try a
wrestling match with the strongest.

There was no one among the candidates for confirmation, that year, who
was so well liked as Nils. Gentle as he was and soft-spoken, there was a
manly spirit in him, and that always commands respect among boys.

He received much praise from the pastor, and no one envied him the kind
words that were addressed to him; for every one felt that they were
deserved. But the thought in Nils’s mind during all the ceremony in the
church and in the parsonage was this:

“Now, perhaps, I shall be good enough to win the Nixy’s favor. Now I
shall catch the wondrous strain.”

It did not occur to him, in his eagerness, that such a reflection was
out of place in church; nor was it, perhaps, for the Nixy’s strain was
constantly associated in his mind with all that was best in him; with
his highest aspirations, and his constant strivings for goodness and
nobleness in thought and deed.

It happened about this time that the old schoolmaster died, and in his
will it was found that he had bequeathed his fiddle to Nils. He had very
little else to leave, poor fellow; but if he had been a Croesus he could
not have given his favorite pupil anything that would have delighted him
more.

Nils played now early and late, except when he was in the woods with his
father. His fame went abroad through all the valley as the best fiddler
in seven parishes round, and people often came from afar to hear
him. There was a peculiar quality in his playing--something strangely
appealing, that brought the tears to one’s eyes--yet so elusive that it
was impossible to repeat or describe it.

It was rumored among the villagers that he had caught the Nixy’s
strain, and that it was that which touched the heart so deeply in his
improvisations. But Nils knew well that he had not caught the Nixy’s
strain; though a faint echo--a haunting undertone--of that vaguely
remembered snatch of melody, heard now and then in the water’s roar,
would steal at times into his music, when he was, perhaps, himself least
aware of it.

Invitations now came to him from far and wide to play at wedding and
dancing parties and funerals. There was no feast complete without Nils;
and soon this strange thing was noticed, that quarrels and brawls, which
in those days were common enough in Norway, were rare wherever Nils
played.

It seemed as if his calm and gentle presence called forth all that
was good in the feasters and banished whatever was evil. Such was his
popularity that he earned more money by his fiddling in a week than his
father had ever done by charcoal-burning in a month.

A half-superstitious regard for him became general among the people;
first, because it seemed impossible that any man could play as he did
without the aid of some supernatural power; and secondly, because his
gentle demeanor and quaint, terse sayings inspired them with admiration.
It was difficult to tell by whom the name, Wise Nils, was first started,
but it was felt by all to be appropriate, and it therefore clung to the
modest fiddler, in spite of all his protests.

Before he was twenty-five years old it became the fashion to go to him
and consult him in difficult situations; and though he long shrank from
giving advice, his reluctance wore away, when it became evident to him
that he could actually benefit the people.

There was nothing mysterious in his counsel. All he said was as clear
and rational as the day-light. But the good folk were nevertheless
inclined to attribute a higher authority to him; and would desist from
vice or folly for his sake, when they would not for their own sake. It
was odd, indeed: this Wise Nils, the fiddler, became a great man in the
valley, and his renown went abroad and brought him visitors, seeking
his counsel, from distant parishes. Rarely did anyone leave him
disappointed, or at least without being benefited by his sympathetic
advice.

One summer, during the tourist season, a famous foreign musician came
to Norway, accompanied by a rich American gentleman. While in his
neighborhood, they heard the story of the rustic fiddler, and became
naturally curious to see him.

They accordingly went to his cottage, in order to have some sport with
him, for they expected to find a vain and ignorant charlatan, inflated
by the flattery of his more ignorant neighbors. But Nils received them
with a simple dignity which quite disarmed them. They had come to mock;
they stayed to admire. This peasant’s artless speech, made up of ancient
proverbs and shrewd common-sense, and instinct with a certain sunny
beneficence, impressed them wonderfully.

And when, at their request, he played some of his improvisations, the
renowned musician exclaimed that here was, indeed, a great artist lost
to the world. In spite of the poor violin, there was a marvellously
touching quality in the music; something new and alluring which had
never been heard before.

But Nils himself was not aware of it. Occasionally, while he played, the
Nixy’s haunting strain would flit through his brain, or hover about it,
where he could feel it, as it were, but yet be unable to catch it. This
was his regret--his constant chase for those elusive notes that refused
to be captured.

But he consoled himself many a time with the reflection that it was
the fiddle’s fault, not his own. With a finer instrument, capable of
rendering more delicate shades of sound, he might yet surprise the
Nixy’s strain, and record it unmistakably in black and white.

The foreign musician and his American friend departed, but returned at
the end of two weeks. They then offered to accompany Nils on a concert
tour through all the capitals of Europe and the large cities of America,
and to insure him a sum of money which fairly made him dizzy.

Nils begged for time to consider, and the next day surprised them by
declining the startling offer.

He was a peasant, he said, and must remain a peasant. He belonged here
in his native valley, where he could do good, and was happy in the
belief that he was useful.

Out in the great world, of which he knew nothing, he might indeed gather
wealth, but he might lose his peace of mind, which was more precious
than wealth. He was content with a moderate prosperity, and that he had
already attained. He had enough, and more than enough, to satisfy his
modest wants, and to provide those who were dear to him with reasonable
comfort in their present condition of life.

The strangers were amazed at a man’s thus calmly refusing a fortune that
was within his easy grasp, for they did not doubt that Nils, with
his entirely unconventional manner of playing, and yet with that
extraordinary moving quality in his play, would become the rage both in
Europe and America, as a kind of heaven-born, untutored genius, and fill
both his own pockets and theirs with shekels.

They made repeated efforts to persuade him, but it was all in vain. With
smiling serenity, he told them that he had uttered his final decision.
They then took leave of him, and a month after their departure there
arrived from Germany a box addressed to Nils. He opened it with some
trepidation, and it was found to contain a Cremona violin--a genuine
Stradivarius.

The moment Nils touched the strings with the bow, a thrill of rapture
went through him, the like of which he had never experienced. The divine
sweetness and purity of the tone that vibrated through those magic
chambers resounded through all his being, and made him feel happy and
exalted.

It occurred to him, while he was coaxing the intoxicating music from his
instrument, that tonight would be midsummer night. Now was his chance to
catch the Nixy’s strain, for this exquisite violin would be capable of
rendering the very chant of the archangels in the morning of time.

To-night he would surprise the Nixy, and the divine strain should no
more drift like a melodious mist through his brain; for at midsummer
night the Nixy always plays the loudest, and then, if ever, is the time
to learn what he felt must be the highest secret of the musical art.

Hugging his Stradivarius close to his breast, to protect it from the
damp night-air, Nils hurried through the birch woods down to the river.
The moon was sailing calmly through a fleecy film of cloud, and a light
mist hovered over the tops of the forest.

The fiery afterglow of the sunset still lingered in the air, though the
sun had long been hidden, but the shadows of the trees were gaunt and
dark, as in the light of the moon.

The sound of the cataract stole with a whispering rush through the
underbrush, for the water was low at midsummer, and a good deal of it
was diverted to the mill, which was working busily away, with its big
water-wheel going round and round.

Nils paused close to the mill, and peered intently into the rushing
current; but nothing appeared. Then he stole down to the river-bank,
where he seated himself on a big stone, barely out of reach of the
spray, which blew in gusts from the cataract. He sat for a long while
motionless, gazing with rapt intentness at the struggling, foaming
rapids, but he saw or heard nothing.

Then all of a sudden it seemed to him that the air began to vibrate
faintly with a vague, captivating rhythm. Nils could hear his heart
beat in his throat. With trembling eagerness he unwrapped the violin and
raised it to his chin.

Now, surely, there was a note. It belonged on the A string. No, not
there. On the E string, perhaps. But no, not there, either.

Look! What is that?

A flash, surely, through the water of a beautiful naked arm.

And there--no, not there--but somewhere from out of the gentle rush
of the middle current there seemed to come to him a marvellous mist of
drifting sound--ineffably, rapturously sweet!

With a light movement Nils runs his bow over the strings, but not a
ghost, not a semblance, can he reproduce of the swift, scurrying flight
of that wondrous melody. Again and again he listens breathlessly, and
again and again despair overwhelms him.

Should he, then, never see the Nixy, and ask the fulfilment of his three
wishes?

Curiously enough, those three wishes which once were so great a part
of his life had now almost escaped him. It was the Nixy’s strain he had
been intent upon, and the wishes had lapsed into oblivion.

And what were they, really, those three wishes, for the sake of which he
desired to confront the Nixy?

Well, the first--the first was--what was it, now? Yes, now at length he
remembered. The first was wisdom.

Well, the people called him Wise Nils now, so, perhaps, that wish was
superfluous. Very likely he had as much wisdom as was good for him. At
all events, he had refused to acquire more by going abroad to acquaint
himself with the affairs of the great world.

Then the second wish; yes, he could recall that. It was fame. It was odd
indeed; that, too, he had refused, and what he possessed of it was as
much, or even far more, than he desired. But when he called to mind the
third and last of his boyish wishes, a moderate prosperity or a good
violin--for that was the alternative--he had to laugh outright, for both
the violin and the prosperity were already his.

Nils lapsed into deep thought, as he sat there in the summer night, with
the crowns of the trees above him and the brawling rapids swirling about
him.

Had not the Nixy bestowed upon him her best gift already in permitting
him to hear that exquisite ghost of a melody, that shadowy, impalpable
strain, which had haunted him these many years? In pursuing that he had
gained the goal of his desires, till other things he had wished for had
come to him unawares, as it were, and almost without his knowing it. And
now what had he to ask of the Nixy, who had blessed him so abundantly?

The last secret, the wondrous strain, forsooth, that he might imprison
it in notes, and din it in the ears of an unappreciative multitude!
Perhaps it were better, after all, to persevere forever in the quest,
for what would life have left to offer him if the Nixy’s strain was
finally caught, when all were finally attained, and no divine melody
haunted the brain, beyond the powers even of a Stradivarius to lure from
its shadowy realm?

Nils walked home that night plunged in deep meditation. He vowed to
himself that he would never more try to catch the Nixy’s strain. But the
next day, when he seized the violin, there it was again, and, strive as
he might, he could not forbear trying to catch it.

Wise Nils is many years older now; has a good wife and several children,
and is a happy man; but to this day, resolve as he will, he has never
been able to abandon the effort to catch the Nixy’s strain. Sometimes he
thinks he has half caught it, but when he tries to play it, it is always
gone.




THE WONDER CHILD




I.

A very common belief in Norway, as in many other lands, is that the
seventh child of the seventh child can heal the sick by the laying on
of hands. Such a child is therefore called a wonder child. Little Carina
Holt was the seventh in a family of eight brothers and sisters, but she
grew to be six years old before it became generally known that she was a
wonder child. Then people came from afar to see her, bringing their sick
with them; and morning after morning, as Mrs. Holt rolled up the shades,
she found invalids, seated or standing in the snow, gazing with devout
faith and anxious longing toward Carina’s window.

It seemed a pity to send them away uncomforted, when the look and the
touch cost Carina so little. But there was another fear that arose in
the mother’s breast, and that was lest her child should be harmed by the
veneration with which she was regarded, and perhaps come to believe that
she was something more than a common mortal. What was more natural than
that a child who was told by grown-up people that there was healing in
her touch, should at last come to believe that she was something apart
and extraordinary?

It would have been a marvel, indeed, if the constant attention she
attracted, and the pilgrimages that were made to her, had failed to make
any impression upon her sensitive mind. Vain she was not, and it would
have been unjust to say that she was spoiled. She had a tender nature,
full of sympathy for sorrow and suffering. She was constantly giving
away her shoes, her stockings, nay, even her hood and cloak, to poor
little invalids, whose misery appealed to her merciful heart. It was
of no use to scold her; you could no more prevent a stream from flowing
than Carina from giving. It was a spontaneous yielding to an impulse
that was too strong to be resisted.

But to her father there was something unnatural in it; he would have
preferred to have her frankly selfish, as most children are, not because
he thought it lovely, but because it was childish and natural. Her
unusual goodness gave him a pang more painful than ever the bad behavior
of her brothers had occasioned. On the other hand, it delighted him to
see her do anything that ordinary children did. He was charmed if she
could be induced to take part in a noisy romp, play tag, or dress her
dolls. But there followed usually after each outbreak of natural mirth a
shy withdrawal into herself, a resolute and quiet retirement, as if she,
were a trifle ashamed of her gayety. There was nothing morbid in these
moods, no brooding sadness or repentance, but a touching solemnity, a
serene, almost cheerful seriousness, which in one of her years seemed
strange.

Mr. Holt had many a struggle with himself as to how he should treat
Carina’s delusion; and he made up his mind, at last, that it was his
duty to do everything in his power to dispel and counteract it. When he
happened to overhear her talking to her dolls one day, laying her hands
upon them, and curing them of imaginary diseases, he concluded it was
high time for him to act.

He called Carina to him, remonstrated kindly with her, and forbade her
henceforth to see the people who came to her for the purpose of
being cured. But it distressed him greatly to see how reluctantly she
consented to obey him.

When Carina awoke the morning after this promise had been extorted from
her, she heard the dogs barking furiously in the yard below. Her elder
sister, Agnes, was standing half dressed before the mirror, holding the
end of one blond braid between her teeth, while tying the other with
a pink ribbon. Seeing that Carina was awake, she gave her a nod in the
glass, and, removing her braid, observed that there evidently were sick
pilgrims under the window. She could sympathize with Sultan and Hector,
she averred, in their dislike of pilgrims.

“Oh, I wish they would not come!” sighed Carina. “It will be so hard for
me to send them away.”

“I thought you liked curing people,” exclaimed Agnes.

“I do, sister, but papa has made me promise never to do it again.”

She arose and began to dress, her sister assisting her, chatting all the
while like a gay little chirruping bird that neither gets nor expects an
answer. She was too accustomed to Carina’s moods to be either annoyed
or astonished; but she loved her all the same, and knew that her little
ears were wide open, even though she gave no sign of listening.

Carina had just completed her simple toilet when Guro, the chamber-maid,
entered, and announced that there were some sick folk below who wished
to see the wonder child.

“Tell them I cannot see them,” answered Carina, with a tremulous voice;
“papa does not permit me.”

“But this man, Atle Pilot, has come from so far away in this dreadful
cold,” pleaded Guro, “and his son is so very bad, poor thing; he’s lying
down in the boat, and he sighs and groans fit to move a stone.”

“Don’t! Don’t tell her that,” interposed Agnes, motioning to the girl to
begone. “Don’t you see it is hard enough for her already?”

There was something in the air, as the two sisters descended the stairs
hand in hand, which foreboded calamity. The pastor had given out from
the pulpit last Sunday that he would positively receive no invalids
at his house; and he had solemnly charged every one to refrain from
bringing their sick to his daughter. He had repeated this announcement
again and again, and he was now very much annoyed at his apparent
powerlessness to protect his child from further imposition. Loud and
angry speech was heard in his office, and a noise as if the furniture
were being knocked about. The two little girls remained standing on the
stairs, each gazing at the other’s frightened face. Then there was a
great bang, and a stalwart, elderly sailor came tumbling head foremost
out into the hall. His cap was flung after him through the crack of the
door. Agnes saw for an instant her father’s face, red and excited;
and in his bearing there was something wild and strange, which was so
different from his usual gentle and dignified appearance. The sailor
stood for a while bewildered, leaning against the wall; then he stooped
slowly and picked up his cap. But the moment he caught sight of Carina
his embarrassment vanished, and his rough features were illuminated with
an intense emotion.

“Come, little miss, and help me,” he cried, in a hoarse, imploring
whisper. “Halvor, my son--he is the only one God gave me--he is sick; he
is going to die, miss, unless you take pity on him.”

“Where is he?” asked Carina.

“He’s down in the boat, miss, at the pier. But I’ll carry him up to you,
if you like. We have been rowing half the night in the cold, and he is
very low.”

“No, no; you mustn’t bring him here,” said Agnes, seeing by Carina’s
face that she was on the point of yielding. “Father would be so angry.”

“He may kill me if he likes,” exclaimed the sailor, wildly. “It doesn’t
matter to me. But Halvor he’s the only one I have, miss, and his mother
died when he was born, and he is young, miss, and he will have many
years to live, if you’ll only have mercy on him.”

“But, you know, I shouldn’t dare, on papa’s account, to have you bring
him here,” began Carina, struggling with her tears.

“Ah, yes! Then you will go to him. God bless you for that!” cried the
poor man, with agonized eagerness. And interpreting the assent he read
in Carina’s eye, he caught her up in his arms, snatched a coat from a
peg in the wall, and wrapping her in it, tore open the door. Carina made
no outcry, and was not in the least afraid. She felt herself resting in
two strong arms, warmly wrapped and borne away at a great speed over the
snow. But Agnes, seeing her sister vanish in that sudden fashion, gave a
scream which called her father to the door.

“What has happened?” he asked. “Where is Carina?”

“That dreadful Atle Pilot took her and ran away with her.”

“Ran away with her?” cried the pastor in alarm. “How? Where?”

“Down to the pier.”

It was a few moments’ work for the terrified father to burst open the
door, and with his velvet skull-cap on his head, and the skirts of his
dressing-gown flying wildly about him, rush down toward the beach. He
saw Atle Pilot scarcely fifty feet in advance of him, and shouted to him
at the top of his voice. But the sailor only redoubled his speed, and
darted out upon the pier, hugging tightly to his breast the precious
burden he carried. So blindly did he rush ahead that the pastor expected
to see him plunge headlong into the icy waves. But, as by a miracle,
he suddenly checked himself, and grasping with one hand the flag-pole,
swung around it, a foot or two above the black water, and regained his
foothold upon the planks. He stood for an instant irresolute, staring
down into a boat which lay moored to the end of the pier. What he saw
resembled a big bundle, consisting of a sheepskin coat and a couple of
horse blankets.

“Halvor,” he cried, with a voice that shook with emotion, “I have
brought her.”

There was presently a vague movement under the horse-blankets, and after
a minute’s struggle a pale yellowish face became visible. It was a young
face--the face of a boy of fifteen or sixteen. But, oh, what suffering
was depicted in those sunken eyes, those bloodless, cracked lips, and
the shrunken yellow skin which clung in premature wrinkles about the
emaciated features! An old and worn fur cap was pulled down over his
ears, but from under its rim a few strands of blond hair were hanging
upon his forehead.

Atle had just disentangled Carina from her wrappings, and was about
to descend the stairs to the water when a heavy hand seized him by the
shoulder, and a panting voice shouted in his ear:

“Give me back my child.”

He paused, and turned his pathetically bewildered face toward the
pastor. “You wouldn’t take him from me, parson,” he stammered,
helplessly; “no, you wouldn’t. He’s the only one I’ve got.”

“I don’t take him from you,” the parson thundered, wrathfully. “But what
right have you to come and steal my child, because yours is ill?”

“When life is at stake, parson,” said the pilot, imploringly, “one gets
muddled about right and wrong. I’ll do your little girl no harm. Only
let her lay her blessed hands upon my poor boy’s head, and he will be
well.”

“I have told you no, man, and I must put a stop to this stupid idolatry,
which will ruin my child, and do you no good. Give her back to me, I
say, at once.”

The pastor held out his hand to receive Carina, who stared at him with
large pleading eyes out of the grizzly wolf-skin coat.

“Be good to him, papa,” she begged. “Only this once.”

“No, child; no parleying now; come instantly.”

And he seized her by main force, and tore her out of the pilot’s arms.
But to his dying day he remembered the figure of the heart-broken man,
as he stood outlined against the dark horizon, shaking his clinched
fists against the sky, and crying out, in a voice of despair:

“May God show you the same mercy on the Judgment Day as you have shown
to me!”




II.

Six miserable days passed. The weather was stormy, and tidings of
shipwreck and calamity filled the air. Scarcely a visitor came to the
parsonage who had not some tale of woe to relate. The pastor, who was
usually so gentle and cheerful, wore a dismal face, and it was easy to
see that something was weighing on his mind.

“May God show you the same mercy on the Judgment Day as you have shown
to me!”

These words rang constantly in his ears by night and by day. Had he
not been right, according to the laws of God and man, in defending his
household against the assaults of ignorance and superstition? Would
he have been justified in sacrificing his own child, even if he could
thereby save another’s? And, moreover, was it not all a wild, heathenish
delusion, which it was his duty as a servant of God to stamp out and
root out at all hazards? Yes, there could be no doubt of it; he had but
exercised his legal right. He had done what was demanded of him by laws
human and divine. He had nothing to reproach himself for. And yet, with
a haunting persistency, the image of the despairing pilot praying God
for vengeance stared at him from every dark corner, and in the very
church bells, as they rang out their solemn invitation to the house
of God, he seemed to hear the rhythm and cadence of the heart-broken
father’s imprecation. In the depth of his heart there was a still small
voice which told him that, say what he might, he had acted cruelly. If
he put himself in Atle Pilot’s place, bound as he was in the iron bonds
of superstition, how different the case would look? He saw himself, in
spirit, rowing in a lonely boat through the stormy winter night to
his pastor, bringing his only son, who was at the point of death, and
praying that the pastor’s daughter might lay her hands upon him, as
Christ had done to the blind, the halt, and the maimed. And his pastor
received him with wrath, nay, with blows, and sent him away uncomforted.
It was a hideous picture indeed, and Mr. Holt would have given years of
his life to be rid of it.

It was on the sixth day after Atle’s visit that the pastor, sitting
alone in his study, called Carina to him. He had scarcely seen her
during the last six days, or at least talked with her. Her sweet
innocent spirit would banish the shadows that darkened his soul.

“Carina,” he said, in his old affectionate way, “papa wants to see you.
Come here and let me talk a little with you.”

But could he trust his eyes? Carina, who formerly had run so eagerly
into his arms, stood hesitating, as if she hoped to be excused.

“Well, my little girl,” he asked, in a tone of apprehension, “don’t you
want to talk with papa?”

“I would rather wait till some other time, papa,” she managed to
stammer, while her little face flushed with embarrassment.

Mr. Holt closed the door silently, flung himself into a chair, and
groaned. That was a blow from where he had least expected it. The child
had judged him and found him wanting. His Carina, his darling, who had
always been closest to his heart, no longer responded to his affection!
Was the pilot’s prayer being fulfilled? Was he losing his own child in
return for the one he had refused to save? With a pang in his breast,
which was like an aching wound, he walked up and down on the floor and
marvelled at his own blindness. He had erred indeed; and there was no
hope that any chance would come to him to remedy the wrong.

The twilight had deepened into darkness while he revolved this trouble
in his mind. The night was stormy, and the limbs of the trees without
were continually knocking and bumping against the walls of the house.
The rusty weather-vane on the roof whined and screamed, and every now
and then the sleet dashed against the window-panes like a handful of
shot. The wind hurled itself against the walls, so that the timbers
creaked and pulled at the shutters, banged stray doors in out-of-the-way
garrets, and then, having accomplished its work, whirled away over the
fields with a wild and dismal howl. The pastor sat listening mournfully
to this tempestuous commotion. Once he thought he heard a noise as of a
door opening near by him, and softly closing; but as he saw no one, he
concluded it was his overwrought fancy that had played him a trick. He
seated himself again in his easy-chair before the stove, which spread a
dim light from its draught-hole into the surrounding gloom.

While he sat thus absorbed in his meditations, he was startled at the
sound of something resembling a sob. He arose to strike a light, but
found that his match-safe was empty. But what was that? A step without,
surely, and the groping of hands for the door-knob.

“Who is there?” cried the pastor, with a shivering uneasiness.

He sprang forward and opened the door. A broad figure, surmounted by a
sou’wester, loomed up in the dark.

“What do you want?” asked Mr. Holt, with forced calmness.

“I want to know,” answered a gruff, hoarse voice, “if you’ll come to my
son now, and help him into eternity?”

The pastor recognized Atle Pilot’s voice, though it seemed harsher and
hoarser than usual.

“Sail across the fjord on a night like this?” he exclaimed.

“That’s what I ask you.”

“And the boy is dying, you say?”

“Can’t last till morning.”

“And has he asked for the sacrament?”

The pilot stepped across the threshold and entered the room. He
proceeded slowly to pull off his mittens; then looking up at the
pastor’s face, upon which a vague sheen fell from the stove, he broke
out:

“Will you come or will you not? You wouldn’t help him to live; now will
you help him to die?”

The words, thrust forth with a slow, panting emphasis, hit the pastor
like so many blows.

“I will come,” he said, with solemn resolution. “Sit down till I get
ready.”

He had expected some expression of gratification or thanks, for Atle
well knew what he had asked. It was his life the pastor risked, but
this time in his calling as a physician, not of bodies, but of souls.
It struck him, while he took leave of his wife, that there was something
resentful and desperate in the pilot’s manner, so different from his
humble pleading at their last meeting.

As he embraced the children one by one, and kissed them, he missed
Carina, but was told that she had probably gone to the cow-stable
with the dairy-maid, who was her particular friend. So he left tender
messages for her, and, summoning Atle, plunged out into the storm. A
servant walked before him with a lantern, and lighted the way down to
the pier, where the boat lay tossing upon the waves.

“But, man,” cried the pastor, seeing that the boat was empty, “where are
your boatmen?”

“I am my own boatman,” answered Atle, gloomily. “You can hold the sheet,
I the tiller.”

Mr. Holt was ashamed of retiring now, when he had given his word.

But it was with a sinking heart that he stepped into the frail skiff,
which seemed scarcely more than a nutshell upon the tempestuous deep. He
was on the point of asking his servant, unacquainted though he was
with seamanship, to be the third man in the boat; but the latter,
anticipating his intention, had made haste to betake himself away. To
venture out into this roaring darkness, with no beacon to guide them,
and scarcely a landmark discernible, was indeed to tempt Providence.

But by the time he had finished this reflection, the pastor felt himself
rushing along at a tremendous speed, and short, sharp commands rang in
his ears, which instantly engrossed all his attention. To his eyes the
sky looked black as ink, except for a dark-blue unearthly shimmer that
now and then flared up from the north, trembled, and vanished. By this
unsteady illumination it was possible to catch a momentary glimpse of
a head, and a peak, and the outline of a mountain. The small sail was
double-reefed, yet the boat careened so heavily that the water broke
over the gunwale. The squalls beat down upon them with tumultuous
roar and smoke, as of snow-drifts, in their wake; but the little boat,
climbing the top of the waves and sinking into the dizzy black pits
between them, sped fearlessly along and the pastor began to take heart.
Then, with a fierce cutting distinctness, came the command out of the
dark.

“Pull out the reefs!”

“Are you crazy, man?” shouted the pastor. “Do you want to sail straight
into eternity?”

“Pull out the reefs!” The command was repeated with wrathful emphasis.

“Then we are dead men, both you and I.”

“So we are, parson--dead men. My son lies dead at home, though you might
have saved him. So, now, parson, we are quits.”

With a fierce laugh he rose up, and still holding the tiller, stretched
his hand to tear out the reefs. But at that instant, just as a quivering
shimmer broke across the sky, something rose up from under the thwart
and stood between them. Atle started back with a hoarse scream.

“In Heaven’s name, child!” he cried. “Oh, God, have mercy upon me!”

And the pastor, not knowing whether he saw a child or a vision, cried
out in the same moment: “Carina, my darling! Carina, how came you here?”

It was Carina, indeed; but the storm whirled her tiny voice away over
the waves, and her father, folding her with one arm to his breast, while
holding the sheet with the other, did not hear what she answered to his
fervent exclamation. He only knew that her dear little head rested close
to his heart, and that her yellow hair blew across his face.

“I wanted to save that poor boy, papa,” were the only words that met his
ears. But he needed no more to explain the mystery. It was Carina, who,
repenting of her unkindness to him, had stolen into his study, while he
sat in the dark, and there she had heard Atle Pilot’s message. Even if
this boy was sick unto death, she might perhaps cure him, and make up
for her father’s harshness. Thus reasoned the sage Carina; and she had
gone secretly and prepared for the voyage, and battled with the storm,
which again and again threw her down on her road to the pier. It was
a miracle that she got safely into the boat, and stowed herself away
snugly under the stern thwart.

The clearing in the north gradually spread over the sky, and the
storm abated. Soon they had the shore in view, and the lights of the
fishermen’s cottages gleamed along the beach of the headland. Presently
they ran into smoother water; a star or two flashed forth, and wide blue
expanses appeared here and there on the vault of the sky. They spied the
red lanterns marking the wharf, about which a multitude of boats lay,
moored to stakes, and with three skilful tacks Atle made the harbor.
It was here, standing on the pier, amid the swash and swirl of surging
waters, that the pilot seized Carina’s tiny hand in his big and rough
one.

“Parson,” he said, with a breaking voice, “I was going to run afoul of
you, and wreck myself with you; but this child, God bless her! she ran
us both into port, safe and sound.”

But Carina did not hear what he said, for she lay sweetly sleeping in
her father’s arms.




“THE SONS OF THE VIKINGS”




I.

When Hakon Vang said his prayers at night, he usually finished with
these words: “And I thank thee, God, most of all, because thou madest me
a Norseman, and not a German or an Englishman or a Swede.”

To be a Norseman appears to the Norse boy a claim to distinction.

God has made so many millions of Englishmen and Russians and Germans,
that there can be no particular honor in being one of so vast a herd;
while of Norsemen He has made only a small and select number, whom
He looks after with special care; upon whom He showers such favors
as poverty and cold (with a view to keeping them good and hardy), and
remoteness from all the glittering temptations that beset the nations in
whom He takes a less paternal interest. Thus at least reasons, in a dim
way, the small boy in Norway; thus he is taught to reason by his parents
and instructors.

As for Hakon Vang, he strutted along the beach like a turkey-cock,
whenever he thought of his glorious descent from the Vikings--those
daring pirates that stole thrones and kingdoms, and mixed their red
Norse blood in the veins of all the royal families of Europe. The
teacher of history (who was what is called a Norse-Norseman) had on one
occasion, with more patriotic zeal than discretion, undertaken to pick
out those boys in his class who were of pure Norse descent; whose blood
was untainted by any foreign admixture. The delighted pride of this
small band made them an object of envy to all the rest of the school.
Hakon, when his name was mentioned, felt as if he had added a yard to
his height. Tears of joy started to his eyes; and to give vent to his
overcharged feelings, he broke into a war-whoop; for which he received
five black marks and was kept in at recess.

But he minded that very little; all great men, he reflected, have had to
suffer for their country.

What Hakon loved above all things to study--nay, the only thing he loved
to study--was the old Sagas, which are tales, poems, and histories
of the deeds of the Norsemen in ancient times. With eleven of his
classmates, who were about his own age and as Norse as himself, he
formed a brotherhood which was called “The Sons of the Vikings.” They
gave each other tremendously bloody surnames, in the style of the
Sagas--names that reeked with gore and heroism. Hakon himself assumed
the pleasing appellation “Skull-splitter,” and his classmate Frithjof
Ronning was dubbed Vargr-i-Veum, which means Wolf-in-the-Temple. One Son
of the Vikings was known as Ironbeard, another as Erling the Lop-Sided,
a third as Thore the Hound, a fourth as Aslak Stone-Skull. But a serious
difficulty, which came near disrupting the brotherhood, arose over these
very names. It was felt that Hakon had taken an unfair advantage of the
rest in selecting the bloodiest name at the outset (before anyone else
had had an opportunity to choose), and there was a general demand that
he should give it up and allow all to draw lots for it. But this Hakon
stoutly refused to do; and declared that if anyone wanted his name he
would have to fight for it, in good old Norse fashion.

A holm-gang or duel was then arranged; that is, a ring was marked out
with stones; the combatants stepped within it, and he who could drive
his antagonist outside of the stone ring was declared to be the victor.
Frithjof, who felt that he had a better claim to be named Skull-Splitter
than Hakon, was the first to accept the challenge; but after a terrible
combat was forced to bite the dust. His conqueror was, however, filled
with such a glowing admiration of his valor (as combatants in the
Sagas frequently are), that he proposed that they should swear eternal
friendship and foster-brotherhood, and seal their compact, according to
Norse custom, by the ceremony called “Mingling of Blood.” It is needless
to say that this seemed to all the boys a most delightful proposition;
and they entered upon the august rite with a deep sense of its
solemnity.

First a piece of sod, about twelve feet square, was carefully raised
upon wooden stakes representing spears, so as to form a green roof over
the foster-brothers. Then, sitting upon the black earth, where the turf
had been removed, they bared their arms to the shoulder, and in the
presence of his ten brethren, as witnesses, each swore that he would
regard the other as his true brother and love him and treat him as such,
and avenge his death if he survived him; in solemn testimony of which
each drew a knife and opened a vein in his arm, letting their blood
mingle and flow together. Hakon, however, in his heroic zeal, drove the
knife into his flesh rather recklessly, and when the blood had flowed
profusely for five minutes, he grew a trifle uneasy. Frithjof, after
having bathed his arm in a neighboring brook, had no difficulty in
stanching the blood, but the poor Skull-Splitter’s wound, in spite of
cold water and bandages, kept pouring forth its warm current without
sign of abatement. Hakon grew paler and paler, and would have burst into
tears, if he had not been a “Son of the Vikings.” It would have been a
relief to him, for the moment, not to have been a “Son of the Vikings.”
 For he was terribly frightened, and thought surely he was going to bleed
to death. The other Vikings, too, began to feel rather alarmed at such a
prospect; and when Erling the Lop-Sided (the pastor’s son) proposed that
they should carry Hakon to the doctor, no one made any objection. But
the doctor unhappily lived so far away that Hakon might die before he
got there.

“Well, then,” said Wolf-in-the Temple, “let us take him to old
Witch-Martha. She can stanch blood and do lots of other queer things.”

“Yes, and that is much more Norse, too,” suggested Thore the Hound;
“wise women learned physic and bandaged wounds in the olden time. Men
were never doctors.”

“Yes, Witch-Martha is just the right style,” said Erling the Lop-Sided
down in his boots; for he had naturally a shrill voice and gave himself
great pains to produce a manly bass.

“We must make a litter to carry the Skull-Splitter on,” exclaimed Einar
Bowstring-Twanger (the sheriff’s son); “he’ll never get to Witch-Martha
alive if he is to walk.”

This suggestion was favorably received, the boys set to work with a
will, and in a few minutes had put together a litter of green twigs and
branches. Hakon, who was feeling curiously light-headed and exhausted,
allowed himself to be placed upon it in a reclining position; and its
swinging motion, as his friends carried it along, nearly rocked him to
sleep. The fear of death was but vaguely present to his mind; but his
self-importance grew with every moment, as he saw his blood trickle
through the leaves and drop at the roadside. He appeared to himself
a brave Norse warrior who was being carried by his comrades from the
battle-field, where he had greatly distinguished himself. And now to be
going, to the witch who, by magic rhymes and incantations, was to stanch
the ebbing stream of his life--what could be more delightful?




II.

Witch Martha lived in a small lonely cottage down by the river. Very few
people ever went to see her in the day-time; but at night she often had
visitors. Mothers who suspected that their children were changelings,
whom the Trolds had put in the cradle, taking the human infants away;
girls who wanted to “turn the hearts” of their lovers, and lovers who
wanted to turn the hearts of the girls; peasants who had lost money
or valuables and wanted help to trace the thief--these and many
others sought secret counsel with Witch-Martha, and rarely went away
uncomforted. She was an old weather-beaten woman with a deeply wrinkled,
smoky-brown face, and small shrewd black eyes. The floor in her cottage
was strewn with sand and fresh juniper twigs; from the rafters under
the ceiling hung bunches of strange herbs; and in the windows were
flower-pots with blooming plants in them.

Martha was stooping at the hearth, blowing and puffing at the fire
under her coffee-pot, when the Sons of the Vikings knocked at the door.
Wolf-in-the-Temple was the man who took the lead; and when Witch-Martha
opened the upper half of the door (she never opened both at the same
time) she was not a little astonished to see the Captain’s son, Frithjof
Ronning, staring up at her with an anxious face.

“What cost thou want, lad?” she asked, gruffly; “thou hast gone astray
surely, and I’ll show thee the way home.”

“I am Wolf-in-the-Temple,” began Frithjof, thrusting out his chest, and
raising his head proudly.

“Dear me, you don’t say so!” exclaimed Martha.

“My comrade and foster-brother Skull-Splitter has been wounded; and I
want thee, old crone, to stanch his blood before he bleeds to death.”

“Dear, dear me, how very strange!” ejaculated the Witch, and shook her
aged head.

She had been accustomed to extraordinary requests; but the language
of this boy struck her as being something of the queerest she had yet
heard.

“Where is thy Skull-Splitter, lad?” she asked, looking at him dubiously.

“Right here in the underbrush,” Wolf-in-the-Temple retorted, gallantly;
“stir thy aged stumps now, and thou shalt be right royally rewarded.”

He had learned from Walter Scott’s romances that this was the proper way
to address inferiors, and he prided himself not a little on his jaunty
condescension. Imagine then his surprise when the “old crone” suddenly
turned on him with an angry scowl and said:

“If thou canst not keep a civil tongue in thy head, I’ll bring a
thousand plagues upon thee, thou umnannerly boy.”

By this threat Wolf-in-the-Temple’s courage was sadly shaken. He knew
Martha’s reputation as a witch, and had no desire to test in his own
person whether rumor belied her.

“Please, mum, I beg of you,” he said, with a sudden change of tone; “my
friend Hakon Vang is bleeding to death; won’t you please help him?”

“Thy friend Hakon Vang!” cried Martha, to whom that name was very
familiar; “bring him in, as quick as thou canst, and I’ll do what I can
for him.”

Wolf-in-the-Temple put two fingers into his mouth and gave a loud
shrill whistle, which was answered from the woods, and presently the
small procession moved up to the door, carrying their wounded comrade
between them. The poor Skull-Splitter was now as white as a sheet, and
the drowsiness of his eyes and the laxness of his features showed that
help came none too early. Martha, in hot haste, grabbed a bag of herbs,
thrust it into a pot of warm water, and clapped it on the wound. Then
she began to wag her head slowly to and fro, and crooned, to a soft and
plaintive tune, words which sounded to the ears of the boys shudderingly
strange:

     “I conjure in water, I conjure in lead,
     I conjure with herbs that grew o’er the dead;
     I conjure with flowers that I plucked, without shoon,
     When the ghosts were abroad, in the wane of the moon.
     I conjure with spirits of earth and air
     That make the wind sigh and cry in despair;
     I conjure by him within sevenfold rings
     That sits and broods at the roots of things.
     I conjure by him who healeth strife,
     Who plants and waters the germs of life.
     I conjure, I conjure, I bid thee be still,
     Thou ruddy stream, thou hast flowed thy fill!
     Return to thy channel and nurture his life
     Till his destined measure of years be rife.”


She sang the last two lines with sudden energy; and when she removed
her hand from the wound, the blood had ceased to flow. The poor
Skull-Splitter was sleeping soundly; and his friends, shivering a little
with mysterious fears, marched up and down whispering to one another.
They set a guard of honor at the leafy couch of their wounded comrade;
intercepted the green worms and other insects that kept dropping down
upon him from the alder branches overhead, and brushed away the flies
that would fain disturb his slumbers. They were all steeped to the core
in old Norse heroism; and they enjoyed the situation hugely. All the
life about them was half blotted out; they saw it but dimly. That light
of youthful romance, which never was on sea or land, transformed all
the common things that met their vision into something strange and
wonderful. They strained their ears to catch the meaning of the song of
the birds, so that they might learn from them the secrets of the future,
as Sigurd the Volsung did, after he had slain the dragon, Fafnir. The
woods round about them were filled with dragons and fabulous beasts,
whose tracks they detected with the eyes of faith; and they started
out every morning, during the all too brief vacation, on imaginary
expeditions against imaginary monsters.

When at the end of an hour the Skull-Splitter woke from his slumber,
much refreshed, Witch-Martha bandaged his arm carefully, and Wolf-in-the
Temple (having no golden arm-rings) tossed her, with magnificent
superciliousness, his purse, which contained six cents. But she flung
it back at him with such force that he had to dodge with more adroitness
than dignity.

“I’ll get my claws into thee some day, thou foolish lad,” she said,
lifting her lean vulture-like hand with a threatening gesture.

“No, please don’t, Martha, I didn’t mean anything,” cried the boy, in
great alarm; “you’ll forgive me, won’t you, Martha?”

“I’ll bid thee begone, and take thy foolish tongue along with thee,” she
answered, in a mollified tone.

And the Sons of the Vikings, taking the hint, shouldered the litter once
more, and reached Skull-Splitter’s home in time for supper.




III.

The Sons of the Vikings were much troubled. Every heroic deed which they
plotted had this little disadvantage, that they were in danger of going
to jail for it. They could not steal cattle and horses, because they
did not know what to do with them when they had got them; they could
not sail away over the briny deep in search of fortune or glory, because
they had no ships; and sail-boats were scarcely big enough for daring
voyages to the blooming South which their ancestors had ravaged. The
precious vacation was slipping away, and as yet they had accomplished
nothing that could at all be called heroic. It was while the brotherhood
was lamenting this fact that Wolf-in-the-Temple had a brilliant idea.
He procured his father’s permission to invite his eleven companions to
spend a day and a night at the Ronning saeter, or mountain dairy, far up
in the highlands. The only condition Mr. Ronning made was that they were
to be accompanied by his man, Brumle-Knute, who was to be responsible
for their safety. But the boys determined privately to make Brumle-Knute
their prisoner, in case he showed any disposition to spoil their sport.
To spend a day and a night in the woods, to imagine themselves Vikings,
and behave as they imagined Vikings would behave, was a prospect which
no one could contemplate without the most delightful excitement. There,
far away from sheriffs and pastors and maternal supervision, they might
perhaps find the long-desired chance of performing their heroic deed.

It was a beautiful morning early in August that the boys started from
Strandholm, Mr. Ronning’s estate, accompanied by Brumle-Knute. The
latter was a middle-aged, round-shouldered peasant, who had the habit of
always talking to himself. To look at him you would have supposed that
he was a rough and stupid fellow who would have quite enough to do in
looking after himself. But the fact was, that Brumle-Knute was the best
shot, the best climber--and altogether the most keen-eyed hunter in the
whole valley. It was a saying that he could scent game so well that he
never needed a dog; and that he could imitate to perfection the call of
every game bird that inhabited the mountain glens. Sweet-tempered he was
not; but so reliable, skilful, and vigilant, and moreover so thorough
a woodsman, that the boys could well afford to put up with his gruff
temper.

The Sons of the Vikings were all mounted on ponies; and
Wolf-in-the-Temple, who had been elected chieftain, led the troop.
At his side rode Skull-Splitter, who was yet a trifle pale after his
blood-letting, but brimming over with ambition to distinguish himself.
They had all tied their trousers to their legs with leather thongs, in
order to be perfectly “Old Norse;” and some of them had turned their
plaids and summer overcoats inside out, displaying the gorgeous colors
of the lining. Loosely attached about their necks and flying in the
wind, these could easily serve for scarlet or purple cloaks wrought on
Syrian looms. Most of the boys carried also wooden swords and shields,
and the chief had a long loor or Alpine horn. Only the valiant
Ironbeard, whose father was a military man, had a real sword and a real
scabbard into the bargain. Wolf-in-the-Temple, and Erling the
Lop-Sided, had each an old fowling-piece; and Brumle-Knute carried a
double-barrelled rifle. This, to be sure, was not; quite historically
correct; but firearms are so useful in the woods, even if they are not
correct, that it was resolved not to notice the irregularity; for there
were boars in the mountains, besides wolves and foxes and no end of
smaller game.

For an hour or more the procession rode, single file, up the steep and
rugged mountain-paths; but the boys were all in high spirits and enjoyed
themselves hugely. The mere fact that they were Vikings, on a daring
foraging expedition into a neighboring kingdom, imparted a wonderful
zest to everything they did and said. It might be foolish, but it was on
that account none the less delightful. They sent out scouts to watch
for the approach of an imaginary enemy; they had secret pass-words and
signs; they swore (Viking style) by Thor’s hammer and by Odin’s eye.
They talked appalling nonsense to each other with a delicious sentiment
of its awful blood-curdling character. It was about noon when they
reached the Strandholm saeter, which consisted of three turf-thatched
log-cabins or chalets, surrounded by a green inclosure of half a dozen
acres. The wide highland plain, eight or ten miles long, was bounded on
the north and west by throngs of snow-hooded mountain peaks, which rose,
one behind another, in glittering grandeur; and in the middle of the
plain there were two lakes or tarns, connected by a river which was
milky white where it entered the lakes and clear as crystal where it
escaped.

“Now, Vikings,” cried Wolf-in-the-Temple, when the boys had done justice
to their dinner, “it behooves us to do valiant deeds, and to prove
ourselves worthy of our fathers.”

“Hear, hear,” shouted Ironbeard, who was fourteen years old and had a
shadow of a moustache, “I am in for great deeds, hip, hip, hurrah!”

“Hold your tongue when you hear me speak,” commanded the chieftain,
loftily; “we will lie in wait at the ford, between the two tarns, and
capture the travellers who pass that way. If perchance a princess from
the neighboring kingdom pass, on the way to her dominions, we will hold
her captive until her father, the king, comes to ransom her with heaps
of gold in rings and fine garments and precious weapons.”

“But what are we to do with her when we have caught her?” asked the
Skull-Splitter, innocently.

“We will keep her imprisoned in the empty saeter hut,”
 Wolf-in-the-Temple responded. “Now, are you ready? We’ll leave the
horses here on the croft, until our return.”

The question now was to elude Brumle-Knute’s vigilance; for the Sons of
the Vikings had good reasons for fearing that he might interfere with
their enterprise. They therefore waited until Brumle-knute was invited
by the dairymaid to sit down to dinner. No sooner had the door closed
upon his stooping figure, than they stole out through a hole in the
fence, crept on all-fours among the tangled dwarf-birches and the big
gray boulders, and following close in the track of their leader, reached
the ford between the lakes. There they observed two enormous heaps of
stones known as the Parson and the Deacon; for it had been the custom
from immemorial times for every traveller to fling a big stone as a
“sacrifice” for good luck upon the Parson’s heap and a small stone
upon the Deacon’s. Behind these piles of stone the boys hid themselves,
keeping a watchful eye on the road and waiting for their chief’s signal
to pounce upon unwary travellers. They lay for about fifteen minutes in
expectant silence, and were on the point of losing their patience.

“Look here, Wolf-in-the-Temple,” cried Erling the Lop-Sided, “you
may think this is fun, but I don’t. Let us take the raft there and go
fishing. The tarn is simply crowded with perch and bass.”

“Hold your disrespectful tongue,” whispered the chief, warningly, “or
I’ll discipline you so you’ll remember it till your dying day.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the rebel, jeeringly; “big words and fat pork don’t
stick in the throat. Wait till I get you alone and we shall see who’ll
be disciplined.”

Erling had risen and was about to emerge from his hiding-place, when
suddenly hoof-beats were heard, and a horse was seen approaching,
carrying on its back a stalwart peasant lass, in whose lap a pretty
little girl of twelve or thirteen was sitting.

The former was clad in scarlet bodice, a black embroidered skirt, and
a snowy-white kerchief was tied about her head. Her blonde hair hung in
golden profusion down over her back and shoulders. The little girl
was city-clad, and had a sweet and appealing face. She was chattering
guilelessly with her companion, asking more questions than she could
possibly expect to have answered. Nearer and nearer they came to the
great stone heaps, dreaming of no harm.

“And, Gunbjor,” the Skull-Splitter heard the little girl say, “you don’t
really believe that there are trolds and fairies in the mountains, do
you?”

“Them as are wiser than I am have believed that,” was Gunbjor’s answer;
“but we don’t hear so much about the trolds nowadays as they did when my
granny was young. Then they took young girls into the mountain and----”

Here came a wild, piercing yell, as the Sons of the Vikings rushed
forward from behind the rocks, and with a terrible war-whoop swooped
down upon the road. Wolf-in-the-Temple, who led the band, seized the
horse by the bridle, and flourishing his sword threateningly, addressed
the frightened peasant lass.

“Is this, perchance, the Princess Kunigunde, the heir to the throne of
my good friend, King Bjorn the Victorious?” he asked, with a magnificent
air, seizing the trembling little girl by the wrist.

“Nay,” Gunbjor answered, as soon as she could find her voice, “this is
the Deacon’s Maggie, as is going to the saeter with me to spend Sunday.”

“She cannot proceed on her way,” said the chieftain, decisively, “she is
my prisoner.”

Gunbjor, who had been frightened out of her wits by the small red- and
blue-cloaked men, swarming among the stones, taking them to be trolds
or fairies, now gradually recovered her senses. She recognized in Erling
the Lop-Sided the well-known features of the parson’s son; and as
soon as she had made this discovery she had no great difficulty in
identifying the rest. “Never you fear, pet,” she said to the child in
her lap, “these be bad boys as want to frighten us. I’ll give them a
switching if they don’t look out.”

“The Princess Kunigunde is my prisoner until it please her noble father
to ransom her for ten pounds of silver,” repeated Wolf-in-the-Temple,
putting his arm about little Maggie’s waist and trying to lift her from
the saddle.

“You keep yer hands off the child, or I’ll give you ten pounds of
thrashing,” cried Gunbjor, angrily.

“She shall be treated with the respect due to her rank,”
 Wolf-in-the-Temple proceeded, loftily. “I give King Bjorn the Victorious
three moons in which to bring me the ransom.”

“And I’ll give you three boxes on the ear, and a cut with my whip, into
the bargain, if you don’t let the horse alone, and take yer hands off
the child.”

“Vikings!” cried the chief, “lay hands on her! Tear her from the saddle!
She has defied us! She deserves no mercy.”

With a tremendous yell the boys rushed forward, brandishing their swords
above their heads, and pulled Gunbjor from the saddle. But she held on
to her charge with a vigorous clutch, and as soon as her feet touched
the ground she began with her disengaged hand to lay about her, with
her whip, in a way that proved extremely unpleasant. Wolf-in-the-Temple,
against whom her assault was especially directed, received some bad cuts
across his face, and Ironbeard was driven backward into the ford, where
he fell, full length, and rose dripping wet and mortified. Thore the
Hound got a thump in his head from Gunbjor’s stalwart elbows, and
Skull-Splitter, who had more courage than discretion, was pitched
into the water with no more ceremony than if he had been a superfluous
kitten. The fact was--I cannot disguise it--within five minutes the
whole valiant band of the Sons of the Vikings were routed by that
terrible switch, wielded by the intrepid Gunbjor. When the last of her
foes had bitten the dust, she calmly remounted her pony, and with the
Deacon’s Maggie in her lap rode, at a leisurely pace, across the ford.

“Good-by, lads,” she said, nodding her head at them over her shoulder;
“ye needn’t be afraid. I won’t tell on you.”




IV.

To have been routed by a woman was a terrible humiliation to the valiant
Sons of the Vikings. They were silent and moody during the evening,
and sat staring into the big bonfire on the saeter green with stern and
melancholy features. They had suffered defeat in battle, and it behooved
them to avenge it. About nine o’clock they retired into their bunks
in the log cabin, but no sooner was Brumle-Knute’s rhythmic snoring
perceived than Wolf-in-the-Temple put his head out and called to
his comrades to meet him in front of the house for a council of war.
Instantly they scrambled out of their alcoves, pulled on their coats
and trousers; and noiselessly stole out into the night. The sun was yet
visible, but a red veil of fiery mist was drawn across his face; and
a magic air of fairy-tales and strange unreality was diffused over
mountains, plains and lakes. The river wound like a huge, blood-red
serpent through the mountain pastures, and the snow-hooded peaks blazed
with fiery splendor.

The boys were quite stunned at the sight of such magnificence, and stood
for some minutes gazing at the landscape, before giving heed to the
summons of the chief.

“Comrades,” said Wolf-in-the-Temple, solemnly, “what is life without
honor?”

There was not a soul present who could answer that conundrum, and after
a fitting pause the chief was forced to answer it himself.

“Life without honor, comrades,” he said, severely, “life--without honor
is--nothing.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Ironbeard; “good for you, old man!”

“Silence!” thundered Wolf-in-the-Temple, “I must beg the gentlemen to
observe the proprieties.”

This tremendous phrase rarely failed to restore order, and the flippant
Ironbeard was duly rebuked by the glances of displeasure which met him
on all sides. But in the meanwhile the chief had lost the thread of his
speech and could not recover it. “Vikings,” he resumed, clearing his
throat vehemently, “we have been--that is to say--we have sustained----”

“A thrashing,” supplied the innocent Skull-Splitter.

But the awful stare which was fixed upon him convinced him that he
had made a mistake; and he shrunk into an abashed silence. “We must do
something to retrieve our honor,” continued the chief, earnestly; “we
must--take steps--to to get upon our legs again,” he finished, blushing
with embarrassment.

“I would suggest that we get upon our legs first, and take the steps
afterward,” remarked the flippant Ironbeard, with a sly wink at Thore
the Hound.

The chief held it to be beneath his dignity to notice this interruption,
and after having gazed for a while in silence at the blood-red mountain
peaks, he continued, more at his ease:

“I propose, comrades, that we go on a bear hunt. Then, when we return
with a bear-skin or two, our honor will be all right; no one will dare
laugh at us. The brave boy-hunters will be the admiration and pride of
the whole valley.”

“But Brummle-Knute,” observed the Skull-Splitter; “do you think he will
allow us to go bear-hunting?”

“What do we care whether he allows us or not?” cried Wolf-in-the-Temple,
scornfully; “he sleeps like a log; and I propose that we tie his hands
and feet before we start.”

This suggestion met with enthusiastic approval, and all the boys laughed
heartily at the idea of Brumle-Knute waking up and finding himself tied
with ropes, like a calf that is carried to market.

“Now, comrades,” commanded the chief, with a flourish of his sword, “get
to bed quickly. I’ll call you at four o’clock; we’ll then start to chase
the monarch of the mountains.”

The Sons of the Vikings scrambled into their bunks with great despatch;
and though their beds consisted of pine twigs, covered with a coarse
sheet, and a bat of straw for a pillow, they fell asleep without
rocking, and slept more soundly than if they had rested on silken
bolsters filled with eiderdown. Wolf-in-the-Temple was as good as his
word, and waked them promptly at four o’clock; and their first task,
after having filled their knapsacks with provisions, was to tie
Brumle-Knute’s hands and feet with the most cunning slip-knots, which
would tighten more, the more he struggled to unloose them. Ironbeard,
who had served a year before the mast, was the contriver of this daring
enterprise; and he did it so cleverly that Brumle-Knute never suspected
that his liberty was being interfered with. He snorted a little and
rubbed imaginary cobwebs from his face; but soon lapsed again into a
deep, snoring unconsciousness.

The faces of the Sons of the Vikings grew very serious as they started
out on this dangerous expedition. There was more than one of them who
would not have objected to remaining at home, but who feared to
incur the charge of cowardice if he opposed the wishes of the rest.
Wolf-in-the-Temple walked at the head of the column, as they hastened
with stealthy tread out of the saeter inclosure, and steered their
course toward the dense pine forest, the tops of which were visible
toward the east, where the mountain sloped toward the valley. He
carried his fowling-piece, loaded with shot, in his right hand, and a
powder-horn and other equipments for the chase were flung across his
shoulder. Erling the Lop-Sided was similarly armed, and Ironbeard,
glorying in a real sword, unsheathed it every minute and let it flash
in the sun. It was a great consolation to the rest of the Vikings to
see these formidable weapons; for they were not wise enough to know that
grown-up bears are not killed with shot, and that a fowling-piece is
a good deal more dangerous than no weapon at all, in the hands of an
inexperienced hunter.

The sun, who had exchanged his flaming robe de nuit for the rosy colors
of morning, was now shooting his bright shafts of light across the
mountain plain, and cheering the hearts of the Sons of the Vikings. The
air was fresh and cool; and it seemed a luxury to breathe it. It entered
the lungs in a pure, vivifying stream like an elixir of life, and sent
the blood dancing through the veins. It was impossible to mope in such
air; and Ironbeard interpreted the general mood when he struck up the
tune:

     “We wander with joy on the far mountain path,
     We follow the star that will guide us;”

but before he had finished the third verse, it occurred to the chief
that they were bear-hunters, and that it was very unsportsmanlike
behavior to sing on the chase. For all that they were all very jolly,
throbbing with excitement at the thought of the adventures which they
were about to encounter; and concealing a latent spark of fear under an
excess of bravado. At the end of an hour’s march they had reached the
pine forest; and as they were all ravenously hungry they sat down
upon the stones, where a clear mountain brook ran down the slope, and
unpacked their provisions. Wolf-in-the-Temple had just helped himself,
in old Norse fashion, to a slice of smoked ham, having slashed a piece
off at random with his knife, when Erling the Lop-Sided observed that
that ham had a very curious odor. Everyone had to test its smell; and
they all agreed that it did have a singular flavor, though its taste was
irreproachable.

“It smells like a menagerie,” said the Skull-Splitter, as he handed it
to Thore the Hound.

“But the bread and the biscuit smell just the same,” said Thore the
Hound; “in fact, it is the air that smells like a menagerie.”

“Boys,” cried Wolf-in-the-Temple, “do you see that track in the mud?”

“Yes; it is the track of a barefooted man,” suggested the innocent
Skull-Splitter.

Ironbeard and Erling the Lop-Sided flung themselves down among the
stones and investigated the tracks; and they were no longer in doubt as
to where the pungent wild odor came from, which they had attributed to
the ham.

“Boys,” said Erling, looking up with an excited face, “a she-bear with
one or two cubs has been here within a few minutes.”

“This is her drinking-place,” said Ironbeard: “the tracks are many and
well-worn; if she hasn’t been here this morning, she is sure to come
before long.”

“We are in luck indeed,” Wolf-in-the-Temple observed, coolly; “we
needn’t go far for our bear. He will be coming for us.”

At that moment the note of an Alpine horn was heard; but it was
impossible to determine how far it was away; for the echo took up the
note and flung it back and forth with clear and strong reverberations
from mountain to mountain.

“It is Brumle-Knute who is calling us,” said Thore the Hound. “The
dairymaid must have released him. Shall we answer?”

“Never,” cried the chief, proudly; “I forbid you to answer. Here we have
our heroic deed in sight, and I want no one to spoil it. If there is a
coward among us, let him take to his heels; no one shall detain him.”

There were perhaps several who would have liked to accept the
invitation; but no one did. Skull-Splitter, by way of diversion, plumped
backward into the brook, and sat down in the cool pool up to his waist.
But nobody laughed at his mishap; because they had their minds full of
more serious thoughts. Wolf-in-the-Temple, who had climbed up on a big
moss-grown boulder, stood, gun in hand, and peered in among the bushes.

“Boys,” he whispered, “drop down on your bellies--quick.”

All, crowding behind a rock, obeyed, pushing themselves into position
with hands and feet. With wildly beating hearts the Vikings gazed up
among the gray wilderness of stone and underbrush, and first one, then
another, caught sight of something brown and hairy that came toddling
down toward them, now rolling like a ball of yarn, now turning a
somersault, and now again pegging industriously along on four clumsy
paws. It was the prettiest little bear cub that ever woke on its mossy
lair in the woods. Now it came shuffling down in a boozy way to take its
morning bath. It seemed but half awake; and Skull-Splitter imagined
that it was a trifle cross, because its mother had waked it too early.
Evidently it had made no toilet as yet, for bits of moss were
sticking in its hair; and it yawned once or twice, and shook its
head disgustedly. Skull-Splitter knew so well that feeling and could
sympathize with the poor young cub. But Wolf-in-the-Temple, who watched
it no less intently, was filled with quite different emotions. Here
was his heroic deed, for which he had hungered so long. To shoot a
bear--that was a deed worthy of a Norseman. One step more--then two--and
then--up rose the bear cub on its hind legs and rubbed its eyes with
its paws. Now he had a clean shot--now or never; and pulling the trigger
Wolf-in-the-Temple blazed away and sent a handful of shot into the
carcass of the poor little bear. Up jumped all the Sons of the Vikings
from behind their stones, and, with a shout of triumph, ran up the path
to where the cub was lying. It had rolled itself up into a brown ball,
and whimpered like a child in pain. But at that very moment there came
an ominous growl out of the underbrush, and a crackling and creaking of
branches was heard which made the hearts of the boys stand still.

“Erling,” cried Wolf-in-the-Temple, “hand me your gun, and load mine for
me as quick as you can.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the head of a big brown
she-bear became visible among the bushes. She paused in the path,
where her cub was lying, turned him over with her paw, licked his face,
grumbled with a low soothing tone, snuffed him all over and rubbed her
nose against his snout. But unwarily she must have touched some sore
spot; for the cub gave a sharp yelp of pain and writhed and whimpered
as he looked up into his mother’s eyes, clumsily returning her caresses.
The boys, half emerged from their hiding-places, stood watching this
demonstration of affection not without sympathy; and Skull-Splitter,
for one, heartily wished that the chief had not wounded the little
bear. Quite ignorant as he was of the nature of bears, he allowed his
compassion to get the better of his judgment. It seemed such a pity that
the poor little beast should lie there and suffer with one eye put out
and forty or fifty bits of lead distributed through its body. It would
be much more merciful to put it out of its misery altogether. And
accordingly when Erling the Lop-Sided handed him his gun to pass on to
the chief, Skull-Splitter started forward, flung the gun to his cheek,
and blazed away at the little bear once more, entirely heedless of
consequences. It was a random, unskilful shot, which was about equally
shared by the cub and its mother. And the latter was not in a mood to be
trifled with. With an angry roar she rose on her hind legs and advanced
against the unhappy Skull-Splitter with two uplifted paws. In another
moment she would give him one of her vigorous “left-handers,” which
would probably pacify him forever. Ironbeard gave a scream of terror
and Thore the Hound broke down an alder-sapling in his excitement. But
Wolf-in-the-Temple, remembering that he had sworn foster-brotherhood
with this brave and foolish little lad, thought that now was the time to
show his heroism. Here it was no longer play, but dead earnest. Down he
leaped from his rock, and just as the she-bear was within a foot of the
Skull-Splitter, he dealt her a blow in the head with the butt end of
his gun which made the sparks dance before her eyes. She turned suddenly
toward her new assailant, growling savagely, and scratched her ear with
her paw. And Skull-Splitter, who had slipped on the pine needles and
fallen, scrambled to his feet again, leaving his gun on the ground, and
with a few aimless steps tumbled once more into the brook. Ironbeard,
seeing that he was being outdone by his chief, was quick to seize the
gun, and rushing forward dealt the she-bear another blow, which, instead
of disabling her, only exasperated her further. She glared with her
small bloodshot eyes now at the one, now at the other boy, as if in
doubt which she would tackle first. It was an awful moment; one or the
other might have saved himself by flight, but each was determined to
stand his ground. Vikings could die, but never flee. With a furious
growl the she-bear started toward her last assailant, lifting her
terrible paw. Ironbeard backed a few steps, pointing his gun before him;
and with benumbing force the paw descended upon the gun-barrel, striking
it out of his hands.

It seemed all of a sudden to the boy as if his arms were asleep up to
the shoulders; he had a stinging sensation in his flesh and a humming in
his ears, which made him fear that his last hour had come. If the bear
renewed the attack now, he was utterly defenceless. He was not exactly
afraid, but he was numb all over. It seemed to matter little what became
of him.

But now a strange thing happened. To his unutterable astonishment he saw
the she-bear drop down on all fours and vent her rage on the gun, which,
in a trice, was bent and broken into a dozen fragments. But in this
diversion she was interrupted by Wolf-in-the-Temple, who hammered away
again at her head with the heavy end of his weapon. Again she rose,
and presented two rows of white teeth which looked as if they meant
business. It was the chief’s turn now to meet his fate; and it was
the more serious because his helper was disarmed and could give him no
assistance. With a wildly thumping heart he raised the butt end of his
gun and dashed forward, when as by a miracle a shot was heard--a sharp,
loud shot that rumbled away with manifold reverberations among the
mountains. In the same instant the huge brown bear tumbled forward,
rolled over, with a gasping growl, and was dead.

“O Brumle-Knute! Brumle-Knute!” yelled the boys in joyous chorus, as
they saw their rescuer coming forward from behind the rocks, “how did you
find us?”

“I heard yer shots and I saw yer tracks,” said Brumle-Knute, dryly; “but
when ye go bear-hunting another time ye had better load with bullets
instead of bird-shot.”

“But Brumle-Knute, we only wanted to shoot the little bear,” protested
Wolf-in-the-Temple.

“That may be,” Brumle-Knute replied; “but the big bears, they are a
curiously unreasonable lot--they are apt to get mad when you fire at
their little ones. Next time you must recollect to take the big bear
into account.”

I need not tell you that the Sons of the Vikings became great heroes
when the rumor of their bear hunt was noised abroad through the valley.
But, for all that, they determined to disband their brotherhood.
Wolf-in-the-Temple expressed the sentiment of all when, at their last
meeting, he made a speech, in which these words occurred:

“Brothers, the world isn’t quite the same now as it was in the days
when our Viking forefathers spread the terror of their name through the
South. We are not so strong as they were, nor so hardy. When we mingle
blood, we have to send for a surgeon. If we steal princesses we may go
to jail for it--or--or--well--never mind--what else may happen. Heroism
isn’t appreciated as once it was in this country; and I, for one, won’t
try to be a hero any more. I resign my chieftainship now, when I can do
it with credit. Let us all make our bows of adieu as bear hunters; and
if we don’t do anything more in the heroic line it is not because we
can’t, but because we won’t.”




PAUL JESPERSEN’S MASQUERADE

There was great excitement in the little Norse town, Bumlebro, because
there was going to be a masquerade. Everybody was busy inventing the
character which he was to represent, and the costume in which he was to
represent it.

Miss Amelia Norbeck, the apothecary’s daughter, had intended to be Marie
Antoinette, but had to give it up because the silk stockings were too
dear, although she had already procured the beauty-patches and the
powdered wig.

Miss Arctander, the judge’s daughter, was to be Night, in black tulle,
spangled with silver stars, and Miss Hanna Broby was to be Morning, in
white tulle and pink roses.

There had never BEEN a masquerade in Bumlebro, and there would not have
been one now, if it had not been for the enterprise of young Arctander
and young Norbeck, who had just returned from the military academy in
the capital, and were anxious to exhibit themselves to the young girls
in their glory.

Of course, they could not afford to be exclusive, for there were but
twenty or thirty families in the town that laid any claims to gentility,
and they had all to be invited in order to fill the hall and pay the
bills. Thus it came to pass that Paul Jespersen, the book-keeper in the
fish-exporting firm of Broby & Larsen, received a card, although, to be
sure, there had been a long debate in the committee as to where the line
should be drawn.

Paul Jespersen was uncommonly elated when he read the invitation,
which was written on a gilt-edged card, requesting the pleasure of
Mr. Jespersen’s company at a bal masque Tuesday, January 3d, in the
Association Hall.

“The pleasure of his company!”

Think of it! He felt so flattered that he blushed to the tips of his
ears. It must have been Miss Clara Broby who had induced them to be so
polite to him, for those insolent cadets, who only nodded patronizingly
to him in response to his deferential greeting, would never have asked
for “the pleasure of his company.”

Having satisfied himself on this point, Paul went to call upon Miss
Clara in the evening, in order to pay her some compliment and consult
her in regard to his costume; but Miss Clara, as it happened, was much
more interested in her own costume than in that of Mr. Jespersen, and
offered no useful suggestions.

“What character would you advise me to select, Mr. Jespersen?” she
inquired, sweetly. “My sister Hanna, you know, is going to be Morning,
so I can’t be that, and it seems to me Morning would have suited me just
lovely.”

“Go as Beauty,” suggested Mr. Jespersen, blushing at the thought of his
audacity.

“So I will, Mr. Jespersen,” she answered, laughing, “if you will go as
the Beast.”

Paul, being a simple-hearted fellow, failed to see any sarcasm in this,
but interpreted it rather as a hint that Miss Clara desired his escort,
as Beauty, of course, only would be recognizable in her proper character
by the presence of the Beast.

“I shall be delighted, Miss Clara,” he said, beaming with pleasure. “If
you will be my Beauty, I’ll be your Beast.”

Miss Clara did not know exactly how to take this, and was rather
absent-minded during the rest of the interview. She had been chaffing
Mr. Jespersen, of course, but she did not wish to be absolutely rude to
him, because he was her father’s employee, and, as she often heard her
father say, a very valuable and trustworthy young man.

When Paul got home he began at once to ponder upon his character as
Beast, and particularly as Miss Clara’s Beast. It occurred to him that
his uncle, the furrier, had an enormous bear-skin, with head, eyes,
claws, and all that was necessary, and without delay he went to try it
on.

His uncle, feeling that this event was somehow to redound to the credit
of the family, agreed to make the necessary alterations at a trifling
cost, and when the night of the masquerade arrived, Paul was so startled
at his appearance that he would have run away from himself if such a
thing had been possible. He had never imagined that he would make such a
successful Beast.

By an ingenious contrivance with a string, which he pulled with his
hand, he was able to move his lower jaw, which, with its red tongue and
terrible teeth, presented an awful appearance. By patching the skin
a little behind, his head was made to fit comfortably into the bear’s
head, and his mild blue eyes looked out of the holes from which the
bear’s eyes had been removed. The skin was laced with thin leather
thongs from the neck down, but the long, shaggy fur made the lacing
invisible.

Paul Jespersen practiced ursine behavior before the looking-glass
for about half an hour. Then, being uncomfortably warm, he started
down-stairs, and determined to walk to the Association Hall. He chuckled
to himself at the thought of the sensation he would make, if he should
happen to meet anybody on the road.

Having never attended a masquerade before, he did not know that
dressing-rooms were provided for the maskers, and, being averse to
needless expenditure, he would as soon have thought of flying as of
taking a carriage. There was, in fact, but one carriage on runners in
the town, and that was already engaged by half a dozen parties.

The moon was shining faintly upon the snow, and there was a sharp frost
in the air when Paul Jespersen put his hairy head out of the street-door
and reconnoitred the territory.

There was not a soul to be seen, except an old beggar woman who was
hobbling along, supporting herself with two sticks. Paul darted, as
quickly as his unwieldly bulk would allow, into the middle of the
street. He enjoyed intensely the fun of walking abroad in such a
monstrous guise. He contemplated with boyish satisfaction his shadow
which stretched, long and black and horrible, across the snow.

It was a bit slippery, and he had to manoeuvre carefully in order to
keep right side up. Presently he caught up with the beggar woman.

“Good-evening!” he said.

The old woman turned about, stared at him horror-stricken; then, as soon
as she had collected her senses, took to her heels, yelling at the top
of her voice. A big mastiff, who had just been let loose for the night,
began to bark angrily in a back yard, and a dozen comrades responded
from other yards, and came bounding into the street.

“Hello!” thought Paul Jespersen. “Now look out for trouble.”

He felt anything but hilarious when he saw the pack of angry dogs
dancing and leaping about him, barking in a wildly discordant chorus.

“Why, Hector, you fool, don’t you know me?” he said, coaxingly, to the
judge’s mastiff. “And you, Sultan, old man! You ought to be ashamed
of yourself! Here, Caro, that’s a good fellow! Come, now, don’t excite
yourself!”

But Hector, Sultan, and Caro were all proof against such blandishments,
and as for Bismarck, the apothecary’s collie, he grew every moment more
furious, and showed his teeth in a very uncomfortable fashion.

To defend one’s self was not to be thought of, for what defence is
possible to a sham bear against a dozen genuine dogs? Paul could use
neither his teeth nor his claws to any purpose, while the dogs could use
theirs, as he presently discovered, with excellent effect.

He had just concluded to seek safety in flight, when suddenly he felt a
bite in his left calf, and saw the brute Bismarck tug away at his leg
as if it had been a mutton-chop. He had scarcely recovered from this
surprise when he heard a sharp report, and a bullet whizzed away over
his head, after having neatly put a hole through the right ear. Paul
concluded, with reason, that things were getting serious.

If he could only get hold of that blockhead, the judge’s groom, who was
violating the law about fire-arms, he would give him an exhibition in
athletics which he would not soon forget; but, being for the moment
deprived of this pleasure, he knew of nothing better to do than to dodge
through the nearest street-door, and implore the protection of the very
first individual he might meet.

It so happened that Paul selected the house of two middle-aged milliners
for this experiment.

Jemina and Malla Hansen were just seated at the table drinking tea with
their one constant visitor, the post-office clerk, Mathias, when, all
of a sudden, they heard a tremendous racket in the hall, and the furious
barking of dogs.

With a scream of fright, the two old maids jumyed up, dropping their
precious tea-cups, and old Mathias, who had tipped his chair a little
backward, lost his balance, and pointed his heels toward the ceiling.
Before he had time to pick himself up the door was burst open and a
great hairy monster sprang into the room.

“Mercy upon us!” cried Jemina. “It is the devil!”

But now came the worst of it all. The bear put his paw on his heart, and
with the politest bow in the world, remarked:

“Pardon me, ladies, if I intrude.”

He had meant to say more, but his audience had vanished; only the flying
tails of Mathias’s coat were seen, as he slammed the door on them, in
his precipitate flight.

“Police! police!” someone shouted out of the window of the adjoining
room.

Police! Now, with all due respect for the officers of the law, Paul
Jespersen had no desire to meet them at the present moment. To be hauled
up at the station-house and fined for street disorder--nay, perhaps be
locked up for the night, if, as was more than likely, the captain of
police was at the masquerade, was not at all to Paul’s taste. Anything
rather than that! He would be the laughing stock of the whole town
if, after his elaborate efforts, he were to pass the night in a cell,
instead of dancing with Miss Clara Broby.

Hearing the cry for police repeated, Paul looked about him for some
means of escape. It occurred to him that he had seen a ladder in the
hall leading up to the loft. There he could easily hide himself until
the crowd had dispersed.

Without further reflection, he rushed out through the door by which he
had entered, climbed the ladder, thrust open a trap-door, and, to his
astonishment, found himself under the wintry sky.

The roof sloped steeply, and he had to balance carefully in order
to avoid sliding down into the midst of the noisy mob of dogs and
street-boys who were laying siege to the door.

With the utmost caution he crawled along the roof-tree, trembling lest
he should be discovered by some lynx-eyed villain in the throng of his
pursuers. Happily, the broad brick chimney afforded him some shelter,
of which he was quick to take advantage. Rolling himself up into the
smallest possible compass, he sat for a long time crouching behind
the chimney; while the police were rummaging under the beds and in the
closets of the house, in the hope of finding him.

He had, of course, carefully closed the trap-door by which he had
reached the comparative safety of his present position; and he could
not help chuckling to himself at the thought of having outwitted the
officers of the law.

The crowd outside, after having made night hideous by their whoops and
yells, began, at the end of an hour, to grow weary; and the dogs
being denied entrance to the house, concluded that they had no further
business there, and slunk off to their respective kennels.

The people, too, scattered, and only a few patient loiterers hung about
the street door, hoping for fresh developments. It seemed useless to
Paul to wait until these provoking fellows should take themselves away.
They were obviously prepared to make a night of it, and time was no
object to them.

It was then that Paul, in his despair, resolved upon a daring stratagem.
Mr. Broby’s house was in the same block as that of the Misses Hansen,
only it was at the other end of the block. By creeping along the
roof-trees of the houses, which, happily, differed but slightly in
height, he could reach the Broby house, where, no doubt, Miss Clara was
now waiting for him, full of impatience.

He did not deliberate long before testing the practicability of this
plan. The tanner Thoresen’s house was reached without accident, although
he barely escaped being detected by a small boy who was amusing himself
throwing snow-balls at the chimney. It was a slow and wearisome mode of
locomotion--pushing himself forward on his belly; but, as long as the
streets were deserted, it was a pretty safe one.

He gave a start whenever he heard a dog bark; for the echoes of the
ear-splitting concert they had given him were yet ringing in his brain.

It was no joke being a bear, he thought, and if he had suspected that it
was such a serious business, he would not so rashly have undertaken it.
But now there was no way of getting out of it; for he had nothing on but
his underclothes under the bear-skin.

At last he reached the Broby house, and drew a sigh of relief at the
thought that he was now at the end of his journey.

He looked about him for a trap-door by which he could descend into the
interior, but could find none. There was an inch of snow on the roof,
glazed with frost: and if there was a trap-door, it was securely hidden.

To jump or slide down was out of the question, for he would, in that
case, risk breaking his neck. If he cried for help, the groom, who was
always ready with his gun, might take a fancy to shoot at him; and that
would be still more unpleasant. It was a most embarrassing situation.

Paul’s eyes fell upon a chimney; and the thought flashed through his
head that there was the solution of the difficulty. He observed that
no smoke was coming out of it, so that he would run no risk of being
converted into smoked ham during the descent.

He looked down through the long, black tunnel. It was a great, spacious,
old-fashioned chimney, and abundantly wide enough for his purpose.

A pleasant sound of laughter and merry voices came to him from the
kitchen below. It was evident the girls were having a frolic. So,
without further ado, Paul Jespersen stuffed his great hairy bulk into
the chimney and proceeded to let himself down.

There were notches and iron rings in the brick wall, evidently put there
for the convenience of the chimney-sweeps; and he found his task easier
than he had anticipated. The soot, to be sure, blinded his eyes, but
where there was nothing to be seen, that was no serious disadvantage.

In fact, everything was going as smoothly as possible, when suddenly he
heard a girl’s voice cry out:

“Gracious goodness! what is that in the chimney?”

“Probably the chimney-sweep,” a man’s voice answered.

“Chimney-sweep at this time of night!”

Paul, bracing himself against the walls, looked down and saw a cluster
of anxious faces all gazing up toward him. A candle which one of the
girls held in her hand showed him that the distance down to the hearth
was but short; so, to make an end of their uncertainty, he dropped
himself down--quietly, as he thought, but by the force of his fall
blowing the ashes about in all directions.

A chorus of terrified screams greeted him. One girl fainted, one leaped
up on a table, and the rest made for the door.

And there sat poor Paul, in the ashes on the hearth, utterly bewildered
by the consternation he had occasioned. He picked himself up by and by,
rubbed the soot out of his eyes with the backs of his paws, and crawled
out upon the floor.

He had just managed to raise himself upon his hind-legs, when an awful
apparition became visible in the door, holding a candle. It was now
Paul’s turn to be frightened. The person who stood before him bore a
close resemblance to the devil.

“What is all this racket about?” he cried, in a tone of authority.

Paul felt instantly relieved, for the voice was that of his revered
chief, Mr. Broby, who, he now recollected, was to figure at the
masquerade as Mephistopheles. Behind him peeped forth the faces of his
two daughters, one as Morning and the other as Spring.

“May I ask what is the cause of this unseemly noise?” repeated Mr.
Broby, advancing to the middle of the room. The light of his candle now
fell upon the huge bear whom, after a slight start, he recognized as a
masker.

“Excuse me, Mr. Broby,” said Paul, “but Miss Clara did me the honor----”

“Oh yes, papa,” Miss Clara interrupted him, stepping forth in all her
glory of tulle and flowers; “it is Paul Jespersen, who was going to be
my Beast.”

“And it is you who have frightened my servants half out of their wits,
Jespersen?” said Mr. Broby, laughing.

“He tumbled down through the chimney, sir,” declared the cook, who had
half-recovered from her fright.

“Well,” said Mr. Broby, with another laugh, “I admit that was a trifle
unconventional. Next time you call, Jespersen, you must come through the
door.”

He thought Jespersen had chosen to play a practical joke on the
servants, and, though he did not exactly like it, he was in no mood for
scolding. After having been carefully brushed and rolled in the snow,
Paul offered his escort to Miss Clara; and she had not the heart to tell
him that she was not at all Beauty, but Spring. And Paul was not enough
of an expert to know the difference.




LADY CLARE THE STORY OF A HORSE

The king was dead, and among the many things he left behind him which
his successor had no use for were a lot of fancy horses. There were
long-barrelled English hunters, all legs and neck; there were Kentucky
racers, graceful, swift, and strong; and two Arabian steeds, which had
been presented to his late majesty by the Sultan of Turkey. To see the
beautiful beasts prancing and plunging, as they were being led through
the streets by grooms in the royal livery, was enough to make the blood
dance in the veins of any lover of horse-flesh. And to think that they
were being led ignominiously to the auction mart to be sold under the
hammer--knocked down to the highest bidder! It was a sin and a shame
surely! And they seemed to feel it themselves; and that was the reason
they acted so obstreperously, sometimes lifting the grooms off their
feet as they reared and snorted and struck sparks with their steel-shod
hoofs from the stone pavement.

Among the crowd of schoolboys who followed the equine procession,
shrieking and yelling with glee and exciting the horses by their wanton
screams, was a handsome lad of fourteen, named Erik Carstens. He had
fixed his eyes admiringly on a coal-black, four-year-old mare, a mere
colt, which brought up the rear of the procession. How exquisitely she
was fashioned! How she danced over the ground with a light mazurka step,
as if she were shod with gutta-percha and not with iron! And then she
had a head so daintily shaped, small and spirited, that it was a joy to
look at her. Erik, who, in spite of his youth, was not a bad judge of
a horse, felt his heart beat like a trip-hammer, and a mighty yearning
took possession of him to become the owner of that mare.

Though he knew it was time for dinner he could not tear himself away,
but followed the procession up one street and down another, until it
stopped at the horse market. There a lot of jockeys and coarse-looking
dealers were on hand; and an opportunity was afforded them to try the
horses before the auction began. They forced open the mouths of the
beautiful animals, examined their teeth, prodded them with whips to see
if they were gentle, and poked them with their fingers or canes. But
when a loutish fellow, in a brown corduroy suit, indulged in that
kind of behavior toward the black mare she gave a resentful whinny
and without further ado grabbed him with her teeth by the coat collar,
lifted him up and shook him as if he had been a bag of straw. Then she
dropped him in the mud, and raised her dainty head with an air as if to
say that she held him to be beneath contempt. The fellow, however, was
not inclined to put up with that kind of treatment. With a volley of
oaths he sprang up and would have struck the mare in the mouth with his
clinched fist, if Erik had not darted forward and warded off the blow.

“How dare you strike that beautiful creature?” he cried, indignantly.

“Hold your jaw, you gosling, or I’ll hit you instead,” retorted the man.

But by that time one of the royal grooms had made his appearance and the
brute did not dare carry out his threat. While the groom strove to quiet
the mare, a great tumult arose in some other part of the market-place.
There was a whinnying, plunging, rearing, and screaming, as if the whole
field had gone mad. The black mare joined in the concert, and stood
with her ears pricked up and her head raised in an attitude of panicky
expectation. Quite fearlessly Erik walked up to her, patted her on the
neck and spoke soothingly to her.

“Look out,” yelled the groom, “or she’ll trample you to jelly!”

But instead of that, the mare rubbed her soft nose against the boy’s
cheek, with a low, friendly neighing, as if she wished to thank him for
his gallant conduct. And at that moment Erik’s heart went out to that
dumb creature with an affection which he had never felt toward any
living thing before. He determined, whatever might happen, to bid on her
and to buy her, whatever she might prove to be worth. He knew he had a
few thousand dollars in the bank--his inheritance from his mother, who
had died when he was a baby--and he might, perhaps, be able to persuade
his father to sanction the purchase. At any rate, he would have some
time to invent ways and means; for his father, Captain Carstens, was now
away on the great annual drill, and would not return for some weeks.

As a mere matter of form, he resolved to try the mare before bidding on
her; and slipping a coin into the groom’s hand he asked for a saddle. It
turned out, however, that all the saddles were in use, and Erik had no
choice but to mount bareback.

“Ride her on the snaffle. She won’t stand the curb,” shouted the groom,
as the mare, after plunging to the right and to the left, darted through
the gate to the track, and, after kicking up a vast deal of tan-bark,
sped like a bullet down the race-course.

“Good gracious, how recklessly that boy rides!” one jockey observed to
another; “but he has got a good grip with his knees all the same.”

“Yes, he sits like a daisy,” the second replied, critically; “but mind
my word, Lady Clare will throw him yet. She never could stand anybody
but the princess on her back: and that was the reason her Royal Highness
was so fond of her. Mother of Moses, won’t there be a grand rumpus when
she comes back again and finds Lady Clare gone! I should not like to be
in the shoes of the man who has ordered Lady Clare under the hammer.”

“But look at the lad! I told you Lady Clare wouldn’t stand no manner of
nonsense from boys.”

“She is kicking like a Trojan! She’ll make hash of him if he loses his
seat.”

“Yes, but he sticks like a burr. That’s a jewel of a lad, I tell ye. He
ought to have been a jockey.”

Up the track came Lady Clare, black as the ace of spades, acting like
the Old Harry. Something had displeased her, obviously, and she held
Erik responsible for it. Possibly she had just waked up to the fact
that she, who had been the pet of a princess, was now being ridden by an
ordinary commoner. At all events, she had made up her mind to get rid
of the commoner without further ceremony. Putting her fine ears back and
dilating her nostrils, she suddenly gave a snort and a whisk with her
tail, and up went her heels toward the eternal stars--that is, if there
had been any stars visible just then. Everybody’s heart stuck in his
throat; for fleet-footed racers were speeding round and round, and the
fellow who got thrown in the midst of all these trampling hoofs would
have small chance of looking upon the sun again. People instinctively
tossed their heads up to see how high he would go before coming down
again; but, for a wonder, they saw nothing, except a cloud of dust mixed
with tan-bark, and when that had cleared away they discovered the black
mare and her rider, apparently on the best of terms, dashing up the
track at a breakneck pace.

Erik was dripping with perspiration when he dismounted, and Lady Clare’s
glossy coat was flecked with foam. She was not aware, apparently, that
if she had any reputation to ruin she had damaged it most effectually.
Her behavior on the track and her treatment of the horse-dealer were by
this time common property, and every dealer and fancier made a mental
note that Lady Clare was the number in the catalogue which he would
not bid on. All her beauty and her distinguished ancestry counted for
nothing, as long as she had so uncertain a temper. Her sire, Potiphar,
it appeared, had also been subject to the same infirmities of temper,
and there was a strain of savagery in her blood which might crop out
when you least expected it.

Accordingly, when a dozen fine horses had been knocked down at good
prices, and Lady Clare’s turn came, no one came forward to inspect her,
and no one could be found to make a bid.

“Well, well, gentlemen,” cried the auctioneer, “here we have a beautiful
thoroughbred mare, the favorite mount of Her Royal Highness the
Princess, and not a bid do I hear. She’s a beauty, gentlemen, sired
by the famous Potiphar who won the Epsom Handicap and no end of minor
stakes. Take a look at her, gentlemen! Did you ever see a horse before
that was raven black from nose to tail? I reckon you never did. But such
a horse is Lady Clare. The man who can find a single white hair on her
can have her for a gift. Come forward, gentlemen, come forward. Who will
start her--say at five hundred?”

A derisive laugh ran through the crowd, and a voice was heard to cry,
“Fifty.”

“Fifty!” repeated the auctioneer, in a deeply grieved and injured tone;
“fifty did you say, sir? Fifty? Did I hear rightly? I hope, for the sake
of the honor of this fair city, that my ears deceived me.”

Here came a long and impressive pause, during which the auctioneer,
suddenly abandoning his dramatic manner, chatted familiarly with a
gentleman who stood near him. The only one in the crowd whom he had
impressed with the fact that the honor of the city was at stake in
this sale was Erik Carstens. He had happily discovered a young and rich
lieutenant of his father’s company, and was trying to persuade him to
bid in the mare for him.

“But, my dear boy,” Lieutenant Thicker exclaimed, “what do you suppose
the captain will say to me if I aid and abet his son in defying the
paternal authority?”

“Oh, you needn’t bother about that,” Erik rejoined eagerly. “If father
was at home, I believe he would allow me to buy this mare. But I am a
minor yet, and the auctioneer would not accept my bid. Therefore I
thought you might be kind enough to bid for me.”

The lieutenant made no answer, but looked at the earnest face of the boy
with unmistakable sympathy. The auctioneer assumed again an insulted,
affronted, pathetically entreating or scornfully repelling tone,
according as it suited his purpose; and the price of Lady Clare crawled
slowly and reluctantly up from fifty to seventy dollars. There it
stopped, and neither the auctioneer’s tears nor his prayers could
apparently coax it higher.

“Seventy dollars!” he cried, as if he were really too shocked to speak
at all; “seven-ty dollars! Make it eighty! Oh, it is a sin and a shame,
gentlemen, and the fair fame of this beautiful city is eternally ruined.
It will become a wagging of the head and a byword among the
nations. Sev-en-ty dollars!”--then hotly and indignantly--“seventy
dollars!--fifth and last time, seventy dollars!”--here he raised his
hammer threateningly--“seventy dollars!”

“One hundred!” cried a high boyish voice, and in an instant every
neck was craned and every eye was turned toward the corner where Erik
Carstens was standing, half hidden behind the broad figure of Lieutenant
Thicker.

“Did I hear a hundred?” repeated the auctioneer, wonderingly. “May I ask
who was the gentleman who said a hundred?”

An embarrassing silence followed. Erik knew that if he acknowledged the
bid he would suffer the shame of having it refused. But his excitement
and his solicitude for the fair fame of his native city had carried him
away so completely that the words had escaped from his lips before he
was fully aware of their import.

“May I ask,” repeated the wielder of the hammer, slowly and
emphatically, “may I ask the gentleman who offered one hundred dollars
for Lady Clare to come forward and give his name?”

He now looked straight at Erik, who blushed to the edge of his hair,
but did not stir from the spot. From sheer embarrassment he clutched the
lieutenant’s arm, and almost pinched it.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” the officer exclaimed, addressing the
auctioneer, as if he had suddenly been aroused from a fit of
abstraction; “I made the bid of one hundred dollars, or--or--at any
rate, I make it now.”

The same performance, intended to force up the price, was repeated once
more, but with no avail, and at the end of two minutes Lady Clare was
knocked down to Lieutenant Thicker.

“Now I have gone and done it like the blooming idiot that I am,”
 observed the lieutenant, when Lady Clare was led into his stable by a
liveried groom. “What an overhauling the captain will give me when he
gets home.”

“You need have no fear,” Erik replied. “I’ll sound father as soon as
he gets home; and if he makes any trouble I’ll pay you that one hundred
dollars, with interest, the day I come of age.”

Well, the captain came home, and having long had the intention to
present his son with a saddle-horse, he allowed himself to be cajoled
into approving of the bargain. The mare was an exquisite creature,
if ever there was one, and he could well understand how Erik had been
carried away; Lieutenant Thicker, instead of being hauled over the
coals, as he had expected, received thanks for his kind and generous
conduct toward the son of his superior officer. As for Erik himself, he
had never had any idea that a boy’s life could be so glorious as his was
now. Mounted on that splendid, coal-black mare, he rode through the city
and far out into the country at his father’s side; and never did it
seem to him that he had loved his father so well as he did during
these afternoon rides. The captain was far from suspecting that in that
episode of the purchase of Lady Clare his own relation to his son had
been at stake. Not that Erik would not have obeyed his father, even if
he had turned out his rough side and taken the lieutenant to task for
his kindness; but their relation would in that case have lacked the warm
intimacy (which in nowise excludes obedience and respect) and that last
touch of devoted admiration which now bound them together.

That fine touch of sympathy in the captain’s disposition which had
enabled him to smile indulgently at his son’s enthusiasm for the horse
made the son doubly anxious not to abuse such kindness, and to do
everything in his power to deserve the confidence which made his life
so rich and happy. Though, as I have said, Captain Carstens lacked the
acuteness to discover how much he owed to Lady Clare, he acknowledged
himself in quite a different way her debtor. He had never really been
aware what a splendid specimen of a boy his son was until he saw him
on the back of that spirited mare, which cut up with him like the Old
Harry, and yet never succeeded in flurrying, far less in unseating him.
The captain felt a glow of affection warming his breast at the sight of
this, and his pride in Erik’s horsemanship proved a consolation to him
when the boy’s less distinguished performances at school caused him fret
and worry.

“A boy so full of pluck must amount to something, even if he does not
take kindly to Latin,” he reflected many a time. “I am afraid I have
made a mistake in having him prepared for college. In the army now,
and particularly in the cavalry, he would make a reputation in twenty
minutes.”

And a cavalryman Erik might, perhaps, have become if his father had not
been transferred to another post, and compelled to take up his residence
in the country. It was nominally a promotion, but Captain Carstens was
ill pleased with it, and even had some thought of resigning rather than
give up his delightful city life, and move far northward into the region
of cod and herring. However, he was too young a man to retire on a
pension, as yet, and so he gradually reconciled himself to the thought,
and sailed northward in the month of April with his son and his entire
household. It had long been a question whether Lady Clare should make
the journey with them; for Captain Carstens maintained that so high-bred
an animal would be very sensitive to climatic changes and might even die
on the way. Again, he argued that it was an absurdity to bring so fine
a horse into a rough country, where the roads are poor and where nature,
in mercy, provides all beasts with rough, shaggy coats to protect them
from the cold. How would Lady Clare, with her glossy satin coat, her
slender legs that pirouetted so daintily over the ground, and her
exquisite head, which she carried so proudly--how would she look
and what kind of figure would she cut among the shaggy, stunted,
sedate-looking nags of the Sognefiord district? But the captain, though
what he said was irrefutable, had to suspend all argument when he saw
how utterly wretched Erik became at the mere thought of losing Lady
Clare. So he took his chances; and, after having ordered blankets
of three different thicknesses for three different kinds of weather,
shipped the mare with the rest of his family for his new northern home.

As the weather proved unusually mild during the northward voyage Lady
Clare arrived in Sogn without accident or adventure. And never in all
her life had she looked more beautiful than she did when she came off
the steamer, and half the population of the valley turned out to see
her. It is no use denying that she was as vain as any other professional
beauty, and the way she danced and pirouetted on the gangplank, when
Erik led her on to the pier, filled the rustics with amazement. They
had come to look at the new captain and his family; but when Lady Clare
appeared she eclipsed the rest of the company so completely that no one
had eyes for anybody but her. As the sun was shining and the wind was
mild, Erik had taken off her striped overcoat (which covered her from
nose to tail), for he felt in every fibre of his body the sensation she
was making, and blushed with pleasure as if the admiring exclamations
had been intended for himself.

“Look at that horse,” cried young and old, with eyes as big as saucers,
pointing with their fingers at Lady Clare.

“Handsome carcass that mare has,” remarked a stoutish man, who knew what
he was talking about; “and head and legs to match.”

“She beats your Valders-Roan all hollow, John Garvestad,” said a young
tease who stood next to him in the crowd.

“My Valders-Roan has never seen his match yet, and never will, according
to my reckoning,” answered John Garvestad.

“Ho! ho!” shouted the young fellow, with a mocking laugh; “that
black mare is a hand taller at the very least, and I bet you she’s a
high-flyer. She has got the prettiest legs I ever clapped eyes on.”

“They’d snap like clay pipes in the mountains,” replied Garvestad,
contemptuously.

Erik, as he blushingly ascended the slope to his new home, leading Lady
Clare by a halter, had no suspicion of the sentiments which she had
aroused in John Garvestad’s breast. He was only blissfully conscious of
the admiration she had excited; and he promised himself a good deal of
fun in future in showing off his horsemanship. He took Lady Clare to
the stable, where a new box-stall had been made for her, examined the
premises carefully and nailed a board over a crevice in the wall where
he suspected a draught. He instructed Anders, the groom, with emphatic
and anxious repetitions regarding her care, showed him how to make Lady
Clare’s bed, how to comb her mane, how to brush her (for she refused to
endure currying), how to blanket her, and how to read the thermometer
which he nailed to one of the posts of the stall. The latter proved to
be a more difficult task than he had anticipated; and the worst of it
was that he was not sure that Anders knew any more on the subject of his
instruction at the end of the lesson than he had at the beginning. To
make sure that he had understood him he asked him to enter the stall and
begin the process of grooming. But no sooner had the unhappy fellow put
his nose inside the door than Lady Clare laid back her ears in a very
ugly fashion, and with a vicious whisk of her tail waltzed around and
planted two hoof-marks in the door, just where the groom’s nose had that
ve

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