The Parson and his follower, therefore, had no difficulty in leaving the whole line behind them, so that first their shouts and then the reports of their firearms were lost in the distance, and the forest, soon to be so busy with life, looked as quiet and lonely as if it never could echo sounds louder than the coo of the wood-pigeon.
After five or six miles’ walking, the closeness of the air under the trees began to tell upon them—more especially as this afternoon’s excursion had been preceded by a morning’s walk of sixteen or seventeen miles, and neither of them felt at all sorry when, in a natural opening of the forest, the rough enclosures of a sœter came into view.
“Come,” said Torkel, “we shall get some brandy here, anyhow.” He was mistaken, however, for no living thing was to be found there, except a dog tied to a stump (for dogs are strictly forbidden in skals), that at first made the forest ring with its barking, but soon became reconciled to the intruders by that sort of free-masonry, whatever be the cause of it, which always exist between a dog and a sportsman.
“At all events, they must have milk here,” he said, “and I am not sure whether, just now, I had not rather find milk than brandy.”
The Parson laughed at Torkel’s unusual feelings of sobriety, but quite participated in his longing for milk. This they found, and plenty of it, for the single room of the cabin was full of vessels, shoved in anywhere, as if the milkers had been in such a hurry to complete a task which they could not have neglected without spoiling their cows, that they had not given themselves time to put their milk away.
Torkel went down on his hands and knees, put his mouth into a bucket that stood near the door, and drank away as if—like Odin, when he wheedled Gunlauth into letting him take a sip from the cup of poetic inspiration—he meant to drain it to the very bottom, and then set to upon a sort of cake that he found strung upon a cord between two of the rafters, which looked something like a number of round, thin discs, of semi-transparent paste, with holes punched out of the centre to hang them up by.[54]
The Parson, who was not less thirsty and exhausted, evinced a little more moderation than this “hog of the flock of Epicurus;” he was content with filling his horn occasionally at the milkpail, and floating in it a handful of cranberries, bushels of which were growing wherever a glimpse of sunshine could penetrate the canopy of foliage, “incarnading” with their red berries the turf of the whole forest, “and making the green one red.”
The refreshment was, as Torkel had observed, better than brandy, and both felt quite sufficiently invigorated for a fresh journey; but their present quarters looked very comfortable,—the shadows of the evening were fast lengthening, and they had already advanced far beyond any point which the skal could be expected to reach that day. They remained, therefore, comfortably sitting on the rail fence, and looking down the grassy glade, without any intention of going farther that night. Since diving into the forest they had not seen a head of game of any kind, except a flock (for it hardly deserved a more sportsman-like appellation) of the smaller description of grouse, which Torkel, whose eyes were everywhere, had detected on the higher branches of one of the trees. Three of these the Parson had brought down in the most pot-hunting and unsportsman-like fashion, by getting them into a line as they sat, and bringing them down as a boy massacres fieldfares. These Torkel was indolently picking, and preparing for the frying-pan, an article which is generally to be found in a sœter, while, at the same time, he kept a professional eye on the glade. The Parson, sitting beside him, was as indolently pulling off the fruit of the hägg, a sort of wild cherry, a clump of which overshadowed the fence on which they were sitting, and afforded them a partial cover from any quick-sighted animal coming up from the forest.