The ice being now somewhat broken, the treble of “the two voices” inquired—
“What man is that with you?”
“A foreigner, who wants a night’s lodging.”
Before long, the farmer and his wife were busy upstairs preparing a couch for me, with the greatest possible goodwill; nor would they hear of Ole returning home that night, so he, too, obtained sleeping quarters somewhere in the establishment.
I find, what the darkness had prevented me from seeing, that this house is situated at the southern end of the Aarfjord, a lake of nearly forty miles in length. Mine host has this evening caught a lot of fine trout in the lake with the nets. They are already in salt—everything is salted in this country—but I order two or three fat fellows out of the brine, and into some fresh water against the morning, when they prove excellent. So red and fat! The people here say they are better than salmon.
Rain being the order of the next day, I post up my journal. In the afternoon I resume my journey by the road on the further side of the lake. Until very lately a carriage road was unknown here. The Fogderi, or Bailewick, in which we now are, is called Robygd: a reminiscence, it is said, of the days not long since over, when the sole means of locomotion up the valley (bygd) was to row (roe). The vehicle being a common cart, with no seat, a bag is stuffed with heather for me to sit on; and this acts as a buffer to break the force of the bumps which the new-made road and the springless cart kept giving each other, while, in reality, it was I that came in for the brunt of the pommelling. The Norwegian driver sat on the hard edge of the cart, regardless of the shocks, and as tough apparently as the birch-wood of which the latter was composed. It won’t do for a person who is at all made-up to risk a journey in Sætersdal: he would infallibly go to pieces, and the false teeth be strewed about the path after the manner of those of the serpent or dragon sown by Jason on the Champ de Mars. Armed men rose from the earth on that occasion, and something of the kind took place now. Don’t start, reader, it was only in story.
“Look at that hole,” said my attendant, pointing to an opening half-way up the limestone cliff, surrounded by trees and bushes. “That is the——”
“Cave of the Dragon?” interrupted I, abstractedly.
“The Tyve Helle (thieves’ cave), which goes in one hundred feet deep. For a long time they were the terror of all Sætersdal. The only way to the platform in front of the cave was by a ladder. One of their band, who pretended to be a Tulling (idiot), used to go begging at the farm-houses, and spying how the ground lay.