“Why, the news is, that you had better look out sharp, if you mean to do credit to my recommendation. I had a message from Bjornstjerna last night, that he meant to get the dref in motion an hour before sunrise, so as to beat out, and give the men time to get home before evening; they must have been advancing for these two hours; our people have heard their shouts distinctly enough, and I only wonder we have had no game yet. Capital mutton chops, these,” he added; “who is your butcher?”
“O, we are pretty good foragers,” said the Captain, carelessly, but at the same time casting an anxious glance round the encampment, to see whether there were any tell-tale horns or hoofs lurking about. “Terrible weather yesterday, was not it?”
“Upon my word, it was as much as I could do to keep the men at their posts; I have got one or two skulkers down in the Länsman’s books, but I do not think I can have the conscience to inflict the fine; I had half a mind to skulk myself;—we must do it, though, in justice to the honest fellows who braved the weather. I think the best man I have is a woman; she did more service in shaming the men and keeping them to their duty than a dozen of us. I had occasion to degrade a skalfogde for drunkenness, and I promoted her into the vacancy on the spot. How the men laughed: they call her some Swedish equivalent to the ‘Dashing White Serjeant,’—and I only wish I had a dozen white serjeants instead of one. But what have you done here in the shooting way? I heard a good deal of firing last night from your post; you have made yourselves pretty comfortable, at all events.”
“It is a way we have in the army,” said the Parson. “There is our spoliarium, however,” pointing to a group of carcasses that were hanging to the lower branches of a fir,—“one bear, two wolves, five foxes, a lot of hares, and”—here the Captain plucked his sleeve,—“and—that is all, besides a young bear which I killed in the fjeld as I came along.”
“Oh come! that is not so bad; and that bear is a glorious fellow! who killed him?”
“Why, we cannot justly say,” replied the Captain, sheepishly: “the fact is, he made a charge upon the picket, and it took a good many hands to quiet him,—you may see that by the gashes; I am afraid the skin is terribly injured.”
“What a mercenary dog you are; these are honourable scars, which, while they impair the beauty, only enhance the value;—every cut is the memorial of a gallant deed.”
Whether the Captain,—who was vehemently anxious to kill a bear to his own hand, and whose conscience upbraided him bitterly for his last night’s dereliction of duty,—coincided in this sentiment, might be doubted; at all events, he made no attempt to remove the doubt by indiscreet confessions, and was only too glad to shift the subject, lest any untimely observation from his companions or attendants might reveal the true state of the case.
“What have you done yourself?” said he; “I am sure your people must have fired twenty shots for our one; I thought you were having a mock skirmish, at one time.”
“O, those people fire at anything or nothing, just for the sake of making a noise. We have got a good many wolves and foxes, though, and a rascally lynx or two; but we have not been so fortunate as you with the bears; though I am clear we saw two or three during the night. I am sorry to say that there were three or four stags killed, and I do not know what to do about it. There was a herd last night very restless; it had tried our line at several points. I had given strict orders to let them pass, but they always got headed back, somehow,—in fact, the men fired at them, that is the truth of it, and the skalfogdar say they could not prevent them. This morning, as many as three were brought in dead, and I am sure I do not see how I am to identify the men who fired; they were firing all night, and every skalfogde stoutly denies that his party had anything to do with it.”