“Well, we will see, we will see,” responds Nils, pulling off his bear-skin mittens and gliding in among the trees in which the traps are set. “The good Lord, who looks after the poor man as well as the rich, may send us enough to attend to the wants of us all.”
He had opened his hunting-bag, and was loosening the snare from the neck of a poor strangled ptarmigan, when all of a sudden he heard a great flapping of wings, and, glancing down through the long colonnade of frost-silvered trees, saw a bird which had been caught by the leg, and was struggling desperately to escape from the snare.
“Poor silly thing!” he said, half-pityingly; “it is not worth a shot. Run down and dispatch it, Ola.”
“Oh, I don’t like to kill things, father,” cried the lad, who with a fascinated gaze was regarding the struggling ptarmigan. “When they hang themselves I don’t mind it so much; but it seems too wicked to wring the neck of that white, harmless bird. No, let me cut the snare with my knife and let it go.”
“All right; do as you like, lad,” answered the father, with gruff kindliness.
And with a delight which did his heart more honor than his head, Ola slid away on his skees toward the struggling bird, which, the moment he touched it, hung perfectly still, with its tongue stuck out, as if waiting for its death-blow.
“Kill me,” it seemed to say. “I am quite ready.”
But, instead of killing it, Ola took it gently in his hand, and stroked it caressingly while cutting the snare and disentangling its feet. How wildly its little heart beat with fright! And the moment his hold was relaxed, down it tumbled into the snow, ran a few steps, then took to its wings, dashed against a tree in sheer bewilderment, and shook down a shower of fine snow on its deliverer’s head. Ola felt quite heroic when he saw the bird’s delight, and thought how, perhaps, next summer (when it had changed its coat to brown) it would tell its little ones, nestling under its wings, of its hairbreadth escape from death, and of the kind-hearted youngster who had set it free instead of killing it.
While Ola was absorbed in these pleasant reflections, Nils, his father, had filled his hunting-bag with game and was counting his spoils.
“Now, quick, laddie,” he called out, cheerily. “Stir your stumps and bring me your bag of bait. Get the snares to rights and fix the berries, as you have seen me doing.”