‘Will you now give in, and sue for peace?’
The Kvaen made no reply.
‘You are a wild creature, Jussi; but I believe that you have good in you, after all, and that you won’t make a bad companion. Now let us two from to-day be friends—friends in life and death—enemies no longer. Will you?’ [[42]]
‘Yes,’ groaned the Kvaen softly. He was conquered, and tears fell from his eyes.
‘Get up again, then, and shake hands,’ said Ambrose.
From that day forward, Jussi was the monk’s friend, and this intercourse gradually produced an ennobling effect upon him, so that he, too, began to realize what it is to be chivalrous. By this means, also, the behaviour of Unnas and Jussi towards each other became better than it had been. Jussi might still strike Unnas for some trick or other which Unnas had played upon him, but it was now with more or less of good-nature and laughter that he treated the little dwarf.
The following story will afford a good insight into Jussi’s character, and give some idea of the coarseness and roughness of a Kvaen. I am very reluctant to relate it, for the reader of it will not think the better of Jussi, but rather the worse. Still, I must tell the truth, and show both the good and the bad sides of his nature.
Jussi had his own house, and a little bit of land just opposite the monastery. One spring it happened that a wild goose settled on the field close to the houses. It was one of a flock of geese which were making their way to the north, but it had injured one of its wings, and could not fly any further. Jussi’s children, a boy and a girl, caught the goose, and shut it up in a hay-loft. There they gave it food and water to drink, and took such good care of it that in a short time it became quite tame, so that they let it out into the field, where it followed them wherever they went, and would even walk straight into the kitchen to get a few delicacies. It let the children stroke it on the neck and back, and of course they became very fond of it, treating it almost as if it had been their own sister. They even decorated it with a red ribbon, and called it Hanhi or Hanhiseni. It stayed with them the whole winter, and roosted at night on some hay in the loft.
The following spring a flight of wild geese again passed over the houses. Hanhi, or the tame goose, was in the yard with the children at the time, and it called out to the other geese. One of them called back again, and the whole flight swooped round the enclosure. Then they came hovering over the houses, and were evidently enticing the tame goose to join them. It responded by trying its wings, which had been unused for so long a time. The trial was successful: the wings carried it, and away [[43]]it flew with the other geese, to the dismay and grief of both the children, who kept standing there, and shouting in vain, ‘Hanhiseni! Hanhiseni!’ They saw no more of it during the whole of that summer. But late in the autumn, when numbers of migratory birds began to return southwards again, a flight of geese one day passed over the place. They swooped round over the houses, and suddenly, before the children were aware of it, the entire flock settled on a field not far from them. There were eleven of them, and they came walking together towards the enclosures. At the head walked a large goose, with a red band round its neck. It cackled, ‘Kah! kah! kah!’ as if to say, ‘How do you do? Here I am again, and all my children with me;’ and so it waddled with the others following it, straight into the enclosure, and into the little barn. The children rushed in and told Jussi that their beloved Hanhi had at last come back, that it had gone into the barn, and that it had a whole flock with it.
‘Leave them alone, leave them alone,’ said Jussi; ‘don’t frighten them.’