“Where to?”
“To the stöl. We are all up there now. It was only by chance we came down here to-day. Will you go with us, or will you stop here? You will be all alone.”
“Never mind; I’ll stop here.”
“Very good. We know of a man living a long way off on the other lake. We’ll send a messenger to him by sunrise, and see if he can schuss you. In the morning we’ll come back and let you know.”
My supper finished, by the fast waning light I began reading a bit of Bulwer’s Caxtons. The passage I came upon was Augustine’s recipe for satiety or ennui—viz., a course of reading of legendary out-of-the-way travel. But I can give Mr. Caxton a better nostrum still—To do the thing yourself instead of reading of it being done. In the Museum at Berlin there is a picture called the Fountain of Youth. On the left-hand side you see old and infirm people approaching, or being brought to the water. Before they have got well through the stream, their aspect changes; and arrived on the other bank, they are all rejuvenescence and frolic. To my mind this is not a bad emblem of the change that comes over the traveller who passes out of a world of intense over-civilization into a country like this. How delightful to be able to dress, and eat, and do as one likes, to have escaped for a season, at least, from the tittle-tattle, the uneasy study of appearances, the “what will Mr. So-and-so think?” the fuss and botheration of crowded cities, with I don’t know how many of the population thinking of nothing but getting 10 per cent. for their money. Sitting alone in the gloaming, under the shadow of the great mountains, with the darkling lake in front, now once more tranquil, and lulled again like a babe that has cried itself to sleep—the sound of the distant waterfalls booming on the ear—a star or two twinkling faintly in the sky—I might have set my fancy going to a considerable extent.
But bed, with its realities, recalled my wandering thoughts. That was the hour of trial! A person, who ought to know something about these matters, apostrophized sleep as being fond of smoky cribs, and uneasy pallets, and delighting in the hushing buzz of night flies. I had all these to perfection, the flies especially, quite a plague of them. But nature’s soft nurse would not visit me. The fact was, I had lost my branch, and the “insectivora” of all descriptions, as a learned farmer of my acquaintance phrased it, roved about like free companions, ravaging at will. Knocked up was I completely the next morning, when at six o’clock the women returned with the welcome intelligence that one Ketil of the Bog was bound for that Goshen, Suledal, to buy corn, and would be my guide.
“I am so weary,” said I; “I have not slept a wink.”
With looks full of compassion, the women observed—“We thought you wouldn’t. We knew you would be afraid. That kept you awake, no doubt.”
Whether they meant fear of the fairies or of freebooters, they did not say. My assurance to the contrary availed but little to convince them. No solitary traveller in Norway at the present day need fear robbery or violence. The women soon shouldered my effects, not permitting me to carry anything, and we started through morass, and brake, and rocks, for the shieling of Ketil of the Bog.
At one spot where we rested, the fair Tori chanted me the following strain, which is based on a national legend, the great antiquity of which is testified by the alliterative metre of the original. It refers to a girl who had been carried off by robbers.