Ale when thou hast drunken it.”
Ibid.
Probably their couches were softer than usual,—probably the fact of their being under a roof where the sun could not shine on their faces, might have prolonged their slumbers; but the fact is, the cock, had there been one at the sœter, which there was not, would have “had his boots on”[55] a very long while before either the Parson or his follower had opened their eyes; and when they did open them, it was some time before either of them could recollect where they were. Swedes are not over fond of open air, and though their glazed windows in the towns are large enough and numerous enough to prove that no ingenious chancellor of the exchequer had ever devised a tax upon their light, yet in the fjeld, where glass is scarce, windows are scarce too, and the few that there are, are generally stuffed with hay. In the present case, though the sun was well above the trees, there was not light enough to see the smoky rafters over head, or the scarcely less dirty strings of flad bröd which were dangling from them; but all round the building there was a perpetual ringing of bells, from the great cracked bass to the little tinkling treble; the sheep, scared by the noises and the fires, had wandered home during the night, and the cows were collecting round the door of the sœter in hopes of being milked, which hopes, for one or two of them, at least, were speedily realized,—for Torkel, taking the bucket that had been well-nigh drained over night, proceeded very composedly to milk them, just as if he were in his own sœter in the Tellemark, observing quietly that new milk was better than old.
In Sweden, as well as in Norway, every animal turned out on a mountain pasture has a bell round its neck; certain esprits forts (all of whom do it, notwithstanding, as well as their more credulous neighbours) assert stoutly that it is to enable the girls to find them among the trees; but as cows generally keep together, and sheep do so, invariably, one bell would be quite sufficient for the purpose. The more probable solution is that given honestly in the Tellemark: that the bells are tied on to prevent the Trolls from milking them in the night,—for no Troll, as is well known, can abide a bell.
While Torkel was in the midst of his operations as deputy dairyman, and the Parson was looking on, half doubting the propriety of the thing, and half inclined to put a stop to it, a sound of laughing and talking was heard behind the fence, and three girls, none of them more than eighteen or twenty, came clambering over it. Torkel did not seem the least in the world disconcerted, nor did they on their part testify the smallest surprise or displeasure, though one of them was the proprietor’s daughter, and temporary mistress of the hut, and the others were her servants; but after exchanging a few joking observations relative to their respective modes of passing the preceding night, and the young ladies’ taste for field sports, they all set to work milking in earnest, and provided for the sportsmen a better breakfast than they were likely to have achieved by their own unassisted efforts; nor could they be prevailed upon to accept any payment, beyond laughingly insisting upon the intruders carrying out every bit of hay, rebuilding the hay-cock, sweeping out the room, and putting everything tidily into its place; till the Parson detected Miss Lilla eyeing, with evident admiration, a pair of Tellemarken shirt-buttons,—round hollow silver balls, about the size of a grape-shot, with which he had decorated his broad-flapped hat. These, after a good deal of pressing, she permitted the “Herr Englesk” to fasten on the red silk handkerchief which formed her very becoming head-dress, and they parted mutually pleased, Lilla remarking politely—as the Parson, shouldering his gun and taking off his hat after the manner of the natives, bade her farvel (for the word is Swedish no less than English)—“Jeg er ret lykkelig ved at kunne berede dem denne lille Tjeneste,” which, as Lilla was a pretty girl, Torkel condescended to understand and interpret,—a thing which he had often professed himself utterly unable to do when the speaker was a bearded man, and informed the Parson that she was very happy in finding such an opportunity of rendering this trifling service.
The Parson’s Swedish was at an end with his “farvel;” all he could do in return was to bow and smile, and wave his hand, as he vaulted over the rail and left the hospitable sœter behind him.
Their journey through the forest was little more than a counterpart of that of yesterday,—now traversing spaces roofed with gloomy fir, and beech not less gloomy when you see their undersides only and breathe nothing but the confined air below them,—now breathing freely in a glade or svedgefall, and gathering a handful of whorts or cranberries by the way,—now pushing through a belt of under-stuff, thick enough to conceal an elephant, but all the time meeting with very little game. Indeed, skals are not by any means the likeliest times to find the smaller game, and even the larger lurk unseen till the very end of them. Torkel had cracked off the Parson’s rifle at a Lo, as he called it—that is to say, a lynx,—that jumped up from under his feet and dashed into a thicket, but with very little effect beyond frightening it, though the beast was twice as large as a fox and twice as red. The parson had brought down a hen “capercailzie,”—but that was the whole of their morning’s sport.
For some time the under-stuff had been unusually thick, and had formed a considerable impediment to their progress; they had persevered through it for about half a mile, and the wood gave no signs of becoming more open, when Torkel stopped, and looked right and left of him through the stuff, as if to find an opening.
“We must be skirting the border of a svedgefall,” said he, “where the air comes in freely; these hazels would never grow in the close forest,—let us edge a little to the right, we are taking the belt end-ways.”
“The right!” said the Parson; “that seems even thicker than where we are now.”