"But have you seen the bear yourself?"
"It was not one, it was two large ones, and perhaps there were two smaller ones besides, as the old ones generally have their last year's cubs and this year's, too, with them."
"But have you seen them?" reiterated the school-master, still more mildly, as he kept drawing the ferule between his fingers.
Thorvald was silent for a moment.
"I saw the bear that Lars, the hunter, felled last year, at any rate."
Then the school-master came a step nearer, and asked, so pleasantly that the boy became frightened,—
"Have you seen the bears up in the parsonage wood, I ask?"
Thorvald did not say another word.
"Perhaps your memory did not serve you quite right this time?" said the school-master, taking the boy by the jacket collar and striking his own side with the ferule.
Thorvald did not say a word; the other children dared not look that way. Then the school-master said earnestly,—