"That lazy fellow!" was the reply. "He would like, I dare say, to have the horse go ranging about the woods as he does himself."
The mother was now silent, although before she had been arguing her own case well.
Arne turned as red as fire. It had not occurred to him before that his mother might have to listen to taunting words for his sake, and yet perhaps she had often been obliged to do so. Why had she not told him of this?
He considered the matter well, and now it struck him that his mother scarcely ever talked with him. But neither did he talk with her. With whom did he talk, after all?
Often on Sunday, when he sat quietly at home, he felt a desire to read sermons to his mother, whose eyes were poor; she had wept too much in her day. But he did not have the courage to do so. Many times he had wanted to offer to read aloud to her from his own books, when all was still in the house, and he thought the time must hang heavily on her hands. But his courage failed him for this too.
"It cannot matter much. I must give up tending the herds, and move down to mother."
He let several days pass, and became firm in his resolve. Then he drove the cattle far around in the wood, and made the following song:—
"The vale is full of trouble, but here sweet Peace may reign;
Within this quiet forest no bailiffs may distrain;
None fight, as in the vale, in the Blessed Church's name,
Yet if a church were here, it would no doubt be just the same.
"How peaceful is the forest:—true, the hawk is far from kind,
I fear he now is striving the plumpest sparrow to find;
I fear yon eagle's coming to rob the kid of breath,
And yet perchance if long it lived, it might be tired to death.
"The woodman fells one tree, and another rots away,
The red fox killed the lambkin white at sunset yesterday;
The wolf, though, killed the fox, and the wolf itself must die,
For Arne shot him down to-day before the dew was dry.