“There is no knowing,” said Torkel; “if you had hit him it would have been all the same. Unless the shot strikes a part immediately vital they take no notice of it.”
There was evidently nothing to be done; and, indeed, the probabilities were that the Parson really had missed, for there was not a vestige of blood to be seen on the turf; and as the shades were closing in and the woods were getting too dark to see anything, they returned to their comfortable quarters, and, by bringing in one of the cocks of rushy hay, they succeeded in making up on the floor of the hut two couches, much more luxurious than anything they had enjoyed since leaving Gäddebäck.
“That will do,” said Torkel; “it is a great piece of luck that we happened upon this sœter. We shall make a much better cookery of our grouse here than we should have done under a tree in the fjeld. There must be a frying-pan here somewhere, if we had only light to find it by.”
“Why do you not light the fire?” said the Parson; “that will give you light enough, for this fuel is as dry as tinder, and good honest birch, too, with some heart in it. You must have a fire for cooking, whether you want it for light or not, so heap up the hearth-stone at once.”
This was done as soon as said; and to the cheerful blaze of dry and crackling fir succeeded the steady, candle-like flame of the birch, lighting up the remotest corners, and glancing on that indispensable requisite of mountain life which Torkel had been seeking. Fresh butter, just from the churn, is not altogether uneatable even in Sweden, and besides, hunger is not nice; the Parson consumed, with considerable relish, his own share of the grouse, and only wished they had been as big as black game, or tjäder. Brandy there certainly must have been somewhere in the hut, for there never was a Swedish hut without; but so well was it hidden, that all Torkel’s experience failed to bring it to light, and, very much to the Parson’s delight, they were reduced to milk, of which there was enough to supply the whole skal.
“Well,” said the Parson, who had succeeded in twisting up his hay into a sort of chaise-longue, with a well-formed cushion for his back, “I did not expect to have a roof over my head; I must say this is a real piece of luxury. Why we are better off than the Captain with his tents; everything we want to our hands, and no host to ask for a reckoning.”
“That would not be over safe in the Hardanger-fjeld,” said Torkel; “but I suppose Sweden is another thing: indeed, in Norway it is only on the Hardanger that the thing is permitted.”
“What is permitted?” said the Parson.
“Why the ghosts of the damned,” said Torkel, “are permitted to wander about the Hardanger as they please. No great favour after all, as you would say if you had ever seen the place; and when they see travellers coming they build comfortable huts by the wayside, with fires burning, and dry clothes, and plenty of brandy and good provisions, and everything a man wants in order to make himself comfortable. It would be pretty much of a temptation anywhere, and you may fancy what it is on that exposed and treeless waste, where, whenever it is not raining it is snowing, and if it is not snowing it is raining. But if a man once enters and accepts the hospitality, he is lost,—the rushing wind carries away the house and all that is in it, and the travellers are never heard of more.”
“You never happened upon a ghost-house yourself, did you?” said the Parson.