“Have I not,” continued the baron, still in a voice that made his subjects quake—“have I not caused ample provisions to be daily distributed among you? Have not you, Mr. Steward, the keys to my store-houses, and have you not my authority to see that each member of my household is properly provided for?”
The steward dared not answer; he only nodded his head in silence.
“If it please your lordship,” finally began a squeaky little voice at the end of the row (it was that of the under-groom), “it isn’t the steward as is to blame, but it’s the victuals. Somehow there isn’t any taste nor fillin’ to them. Whether I eat pork and cabbage or porridge with molasses, it don’t make no difference. It all tastes alike. As I say, your lordship, the old Nick has got into the victuals.”
The under-groom had hardly ceased speaking before the baron, who was a very irascible old gentleman, seized his large gold-headed cane and as quickly as his bulk would allow, rushed forward to give vent to his anger.
“I’ll teach you manners, you impudent clown!” he bawled out, as, with his cane lifted above his head, he rushed into the ranks of the frightened servants, shouting to the under-groom, “Criticise my victuals, will you, you miserable knave!”
The under-groom having on former occasions made the acquaintance of the baron’s cane, and still remembering the unpleasant sensation, immediately made for the door, and slipped nimbly out before a blow had reached him. All the others, who had to suffer for their spokesman’s boldness, tumbled pell-mell through the same opening, jumped, rolled, or vaulted down the steps, and landed in a confused heap at the bottom of the stairs.
The baron, in the meanwhile, marched with long strides up and down the floor, and expressed himself, not in the politest language, concerning the impudence of his domestics.
“However,” he grumbled to himself, “I must look into this affair and find out what fraud there is at the bottom of it. The poor creatures couldn’t get as lean as that unless there was some real trouble.”
About three hours later the baron heard the large bell over the gable of his store-house ring out for dinner. The wood-cutters and the men who drove the snow-plough, and all other laborers on the large estate, as soon as they heard it, flung away their axes and snow-shovels and hurried up to the mansion, their beards and hair and eyebrows all white with hoar-frost, so that they looked like walking snow-men. But as it happened, the under-groom, Nils Tagfat, chanced at that moment to be cutting down a large snow-laden fir-tree which grew on a projecting knoll of the mountain. He pulled off his mittens and blew on his hands (for it was bitter cold), and was about to shoulder his axe, when suddenly he heard a chorus of queer little metallic voices, as it seemed, right under his feet. He stopped and listened.
“There is the bell of Halthorp ringing! Where is my cap? where is my cap?” he heard distinctly uttered, though he could not exactly place the sound, nor did he see anybody within a mile around. And just for the joke of the thing, Nils, who was always a jolly fellow, made his voice as fine as he could, and, mimicking the tiny voices, squeaked out: