This was evidently the head quarters of the skal, where the generals and field officers were holding high council, receiving information, arranging plans, and issuing orders; and Birger, springing from his cariole and throwing the reins of his horse to his schutzebond, or post-boy, and committing, with utter recklessness of consequences, the whole department of quartermaster-general, and commissary-general to boot, into the hands of Jacob, rushed into the room, followed by his three friends.
This opportune reinforcement was greeted with shouts of welcome: Birger himself was an old friend of the Ofwer Jagmästere, and had, before this, signalized himself as a hunter. Englishmen are invariably popular both in Norway and Sweden; and besides, the value of English rifles, and English sportsmen to carry them, was universally acknowledged. Moodie, however, was the great prize; he had been now, for four years in the country, and had been there quite long enough to be known and appreciated as the best shot and the most sagacious and inventive leader in the province. With a natural turn for the chase in all its varieties, he had thrown himself, heart and soul, into the business of bear hunting, had studied it theoretically and had worked out his theories practically, till he was universally acknowledged to be a fair match for the “gentleman in the fur cloak, who has the wisdom of ten and the strength of twenty,” as the Swedes periphrastically term their great enemy, the bear.
He had remained in the porch for a minute or two, giving some directions to his followers, so that the greetings, and introductions, and first inquiries had a little subsided when he entered; but the moment his well-known green cap was seen in the doorway, there arose such a shout of welcome, that it made the flitches of bacon and strings of onions tremble from the rafters.
“Modige! Modige!”[49] for so they had naturalized his name into a word which, in their language, signifies courageous.
The well-known cry was caught up among the parties out of doors, and echoed back again from tree to tree, while the glare of the camp-fires shewed dark shadows of insane figures, waving arms and hats, aye, and handkerchiefs, too, for every woman who can possibly slip away from home, turns out on a skal.
“Modige! Modige!” again came thundering and screaming back in all sorts of voice, old and young, male and female; now dying away, then bursting forth, as some distant post took it up again.
“Upon my word,” said the Ofwer Jagmästere Bjornstjerna, speaking in French, out of compliment to the strangers—for this language, though utterly despised in Norway, is pretty generally spoken among the Swedish aristocracy; “upon my word, the people have decided the matter for us; I wanted some one to take charge of the hållet, and was going to offer you the command the moment I saw you, but the people seem to have taken the matter into their own hands now; you cannot possibly refuse, you are elected by acclamation.”
“I am delighted to be of any use,” said Moodie,—in fact, he did look delighted in good earnest,—“and will do my best; but you are aware that I am not very familiar with the ground here.”
“Never mind that,” said Bjornstjerna; “we will soon find some one to be your quartermaster-general; what we want is, a man that the people look up to, who knows his business, and is accustomed to command.”