Karsten and I grabbed our big stakes and quick as lightning tore away the dam. However it happened, I really don't know, but it must be that we tore away some big stones we had never disturbed before, and that our doing this made the whole waterfall take an entirely different direction. It foamed and crashed—you couldn't hear yourself think!—It was really magnificent.
"Hurrah!" shouted Karsten and I.
But right through the tremendous roar of the waterfall, there came cleaving the air the wildest pig squeal you ever heard, from the ground down below us. The waterfall kept on roaring, and the pig squeals grew worse and worse.
It never occurred to me for a moment that the pig squeals had anything to do with our waterfall. We couldn't see what was going on below from where we stood. I thought Thora Heja was behaving in the queerest way, however, for instead of standing quietly and admiring the waterfall as we had expected, she began to shriek and point and throw up her arms beseechingly and try to tell us something; finally she took to her heels and vanished through the wet grass down the steep hillside, shouting and screaming as she went.
Soon after we heard many voices down below all talking at once, but the waterfall kept on with its rush and noise, for, as I have said, there was a tremendous lot of water in the pond that day. All this happened in a much shorter time than it takes me to write it, you know.
I heard Soren, the mason's, angry voice.
"Such a thing as this sha'n't be permitted! I won't have it—not if I swing for it! Even if it is the judge's children themselves——"
A sudden suspicion popped into my head.
"Karsten! Something must have gone wrong with our waterfall!"
"I'll run down and see!"