“Nonsense! what is the meat of Valhalla called here on earth?”
“Goat’s flesh,” said Birger, demurely.
“Humph!” said the Parson, turning over, with his crimping knife, a bone almost big enough to have belonged to a small ox; “and this is a goat’s rib, is it?”
“Valhalla was always remarkable for its breed of goats,” said Birger: “but never you mind what rib it is, there’s a biscuit to eat with it, that is all you need care about, just now. I am afraid our host, the Skalfogdar” (bowing to the Captain), “cannot find you any currant jelly to eat with it.”
“I can find you some cranberry jelly, though,” said the Captain, “which is a much better thing, and much more characteristic of the country. Here, Jacob, hand me that mess-tin, will you. The very first thing I did, after reconnoitring my post, was to lay in a store of these cranberries, and to make them into jelly. I had not to go far for them. You would not like them in the Swedish fashion—pickled,—would you? I think the men have got some which they have made for themselves.”
“Thank you, yes; and a little of the forbidden stuff, too, to wash it down with. Never mind the water, Piersen, I have taken my share of that already.”
Here Jacob made his appearance, with four or five orre grouse, spitted upon a strip of fir;—Jacob piqued himself on his fjeld cuisine, and really did serve up his dinners admirably. The whole was concluded with split grayling, by way of cheese, for being north of the Wener Sjön, they were in the grayling country,—a circumstance which the Captain, whose post was not a mile from the river, had not been slow to profit by;—on the sunny morning of the preceding day, he had caught them by dozens. The grayling, which are seldom caught in Norway, where the rivers are mostly too rough for such tender fish, abound throughout the whole north of Sweden, and are worth anything to the fisherman; they render his chances of sport, as well as of provisions, very much less precarious, because they do everything which trout do not; they are stationary when—in Sweden, at all events—the trout is migratory; they come into high season when the trout are going out; they will not rise in a stormy day, which the trout loves; but, when the sun is bright and the wind is low, and not a ripple curls the surface, and not a trout stirs beneath it, the swift, shadow-like grayling dot it with their rises like so many hail-stones. They are very good eating, too, when dressed in any way man can devise; but a very excellent method, and a very common method in Sweden, is to split them down the back, pepper them well, and dry them in the hot sun before broiling them, or making them into plok-fiske. This Jacob was unable to do on the present occasion, for the rain had been falling from the time of the Captain’s return from the river; so he had substituted for the sun that which was scarcely less hot—the Captain’s blazing fire; and his imitation was unanimously pronounced to have exceeded the original.
“I do not think I should have fared like this at any of the farm houses,” said the Parson, stretching himself at full length on his cloak and basking at the fire, for the rain had now entirely ceased, and the bivouac began to look home-like and comfortable. “I must say it required a pretty firm determination to keep steadily onward, with soaked clothes and chilled bones and empty stomachs, such as we had this morning. I was sorely tempted to make for shelter; but I set before me the comforts of persevering, and I am very glad I did so. To say nothing of your company and Jacob’s dinner, this glorious blaze is far better than a farm-house stove, and my old cloak than a dirty sheep-skin. Well, virtue is its own reward. Jacob, fill the pot with hot water, and let us have a few embers here to keep it warm. Have you got any sugar?”
“There is nothing your countrymen are so remarkable for,” said Birger, “as a steady, resolute perseverance against difficulties and discouragements.”