“Perhaps not. I never watched, to see what happens when the Gammel cheese is left alone. I only say I do not grudge our cheese, as somebody has it. I will carry it myself, in token of good-will, if you will let me, Erica. Here,—shift it upon my head.”
Erica would not hear of this, and began to walk away with her load, begging Stiorna to watch the cattle,—not once to take her eye off them, till she should return to assume her watch for the night hours.
“I know why you will not let me carry the cheese,” said Frolich, smiling. “You are thinking of Oddo with the cake and ale. Nobody but you must deposit offerings henceforward. You are afraid I should eat up that cheese, almost as heavy as myself. You think there would not be a paring left for the demon, by the time I got to the ridge.”
“Not so,” replied Erica. “I think that he to whom this cheese is destined had rather be served by one who does not laugh at him. And it is a safer plan for you, Frolich.”
And off went Erica with her cheese.
The ridge on which she laid it would have tempted her at any other time to sit down. It was green and soft with mosses, and offered as comfortable a couch to one tired with the labours of the day as any to be found at the farm. But, to-night it was to be haunted: so Erica merely stayed to do her duty. She selected the softest tuft of moss on which to lay the cheese, put her offering reverently down, and then diligently gathered the brightest blossoms from the herbage around, and strewed them over the cheese. She then walked rapidly homewards, without once looking behind her. If she had had the curiosity and courage to watch for a little while, she would have seen her offering carried off by an odd little figure, with nothing very terrible in its appearance; namely, a woman about four feet high, with a flat face, and eyes wide apart, wearing a reindeer garment like a waggoner’s frock, a red comforter about her neck, a red cloth cap on her head, a blue worsted sash, and leather boots up to the knee:—in short, such a Lapland girl as Erica would have given a rye-cake to as charity, but would not have thought of asking to sit down, even in her master’s kitchen;—for the Norwegian servants are very high and saucy towards the Lapps who wander to their doors. It is not surprising that the Lapps who pitch their tents on the mountain should like having a fine Gammel cheese for the trouble of picking it up: and the company whose tents Erica had passed on her way up to the seater, kept a good look-out upon all the dairy people round, and carried off every cheese meant for the demon. While Erica was gathering and strewing the blossoms, this girl was hidden near: and, trusting to Erica’s not looking behind her, the rogue swept off the blossoms, and threw them at her, before she had gone ten yards, trundled the cheese down the other side of the ridge, made a circuit, and was at the tents with her prize before supper-time! What would Erica have thought if she had beheld this fruit of so many milkings and skimmings, so much boiling and pressing, devoured by greedy Lapps in their dirty tent?
On her way homewards, Erica remembered that this was Midsummer Eve,—a season when her mother was in her thoughts more than at any other time, for Midsummer Eve is sacred in Norway to the Wood-Demon, whose victim she believed her mother to have been. Every woodman sticks his axe into a tree that night, that the demon may, if he pleases, begin the work of the year by felling trees, or making a fagot. Erica hastened to the seater, to discover whether Erlingsen had left his axe behind, and whether Jan had one with him.
Jan had an axe, and remembering his duty, though tired and sleepy, was just going to the nearest pine grove with it when Erica reached home; she seized Erlingsen’s axe and went also, and stuck it in a tree, just within the verge of the grove, which was in that part a thicket, from the growth of underwood. This thicket was so near the back of the dairy that the two were home in five minutes; yet they found Frolich almost as impatient as if they had been gone an hour. She asked whether their heathen worship was done at last, so that all might go to bed, or whether they were to be kept awake till midnight by more mummery?
Erica replied by showing that Jan was already gone to his loft over the shed, and begging leave to comb and curl Frolich’s hair, and see her to rest at once. Stiorna was asleep; and Erica herself meant to watch the cattle this night. They lay couched in the grass, all near each other, and within view, in the mild slanting sunshine, and here she intended to sit, on the bench outside the home-shed, and keep her eye on them till morning.
“You are thinking of the Bishop of Tronyem’s cattle,” said Frolich.