“It was Birger’s plan,” said the Captain, “they have done it pretty continuously along the line of the dref; it is intended to look like a trap, and to prevent the game from coming up the pass during the rain, when we cannot trust to our rifles. We have had half-a-dozen wolves here last night; there is one of them,” pointing to a carcase which two of the men were skinning. “I was not ready for them, that is the truth, for I was eating my supper. I ought, certainly, to have had a brace of them, but this gentleman was a little in the rear of his party, and the Devil took the hindermost,—at least my little pea-rifle did. And there are a couple of foxes; Tom says their skins are valuable. I picked them off during the night. I am pretty sure we had a bear, too, early this morning; but he turned, whatever he was, before I could get a sight of him.”
“No wonder, with that fire,” said the Parson.
“Why, we do want to keep them in,” said the Captain; “besides, who is to do without a fire in such weather as this? There—had you not better go and make yourself comfortable. Jacob has brought your knapsack and cloak: you will find them there in the tent—(by-the-bye, what do you think of the use of tents now?) After that I suppose you will be ready for dinner?”
“You may say that,” said the Parson; “it is little beside biscuit sopped in rain that we have had this day. Tom,” he shouted, “mind you take care of Torkel there; going without his grub is a serious thing to one of your country, and a still more serious thing going without his brandy.”
“As for your wet clothes,” continued the Captain, “there is no help for that. Birger’s are much in the same mess, but we have a fire big enough to dry anything, if the rain would only hold off. In the meanwhile you must keep under canvas; those lug-sails of yours keep the wet out capitally. You see, I have used them for roof, and have built up walls to them with fir-branches and junipers.”
“Upon my word,” said the Parson, “it is quite luxurious, and so is this dry flannel shirt—Heaven bless the man who invented flannel shirts,—I should have been dead with cold by this time, if I had been wearing a linen one. Hallo, Jacob! you look rather moist; what is the state of the larder?”
Whatever the state of the larder was, the Captain had determined it should be a mystery, for he knew well that nothing unfits a man for subsequent work so much as a hearty meal after great fatigue upon little sustenance. As soon, therefore, as he heard that they had eaten little or nothing since their breakfast at the sœter on the preceding day, he gave a private sign to Jacob, and nothing whatever was forthcoming but a good strong basin of portable soup, smoking hot, with a couple of kahyt scorpor bobbing about in it; and, early as it was in the day—for it was not more than four in the afternoon,—the Parson was well satisfied to scoop out a bed in the dry moss of the tent, to draw his fur cloak over him, and to seek in sleep the rest which he needed quite as much as he did the food.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WATCH FIRE.
“Fire will be needful