‘Gertrude’s heart was hardened still more; she put that aside too, resolving as soon as the stranger left her to divide all her dough into little bits, and to roll it out into great loaves. “I cannot give you any to-day,” said she. “Go on your journey; the Lord prosper you, but you must not stop at my house.”
‘Then the Lord Christ was angry, and her eyes were opened, and she saw whom she had forbidden to come into the house, and she fell down on her knees. But the Lord said, “I gave you plenty, but that hardened your heart, so plenty was not a blessing to you. I will try you now with the blessing of poverty; you shall from henceforth seek your food day by day, and always between the wood and the bark” (alluding to the custom of mixing the inner rind of the birch with their rye-meal in times of scarcity). “But forasmuch as I see your penitence is sincere, this shall not be for ever; as soon as your back is entirely clothed with mourning this shall cease, for by that time you will have learnt to use your gifts rightly.”
‘Gertrude flew from the presence of the Lord, for she was already a bird, but her feathers were even now blackened from her mourning, and from that time forward she and her descendants have all the year round sought their food between the wood and the bark; but the feathers of their back and wings get more mottled with black as they grow older, and when the white is quite covered the Lord takes them for His own again.
‘No Norwegian will ever hurt a Gertrude bird, for she is always under the Lord’s protection, though He is punishing her for the time.’
Whether this is the true reason or not, the fact remains that the bird is never harmed by any one, and is as tame as possible.
We continued climbing slowly up the hill till about one o’clock, when we came out above the forest on an open plateau covered with rocks, grass, and low scrub: this was the Fjeld. At Finböle Sæter we stopped to refresh on milk. The road—which had gradually dwindled from a decent path to a sleigh track, then a footpath, a cow-path, and a goat-path, just sufficient to swear by, or at—now lost itself altogether. The men had been complaining that it was a ‘dole vei’ soon after the start, now they said it was ‘schlamm’—a very expressive word; and Esau agreed with them, and said it was ‘damm schlamm,’ which does not sound like proper Norsk; but it was such heart-rending work to see our beloved canoes bumping and jolting along, every moment in imminent danger of getting staved in, that to indulge in a few such Norwegian idioms was only human; and we decided to walk on and spare ourselves the agony of the sight: so, taking the bearings of ‘Fly Sæter’—which was our destination for the evening—we rambled on across the fjeld—a splendid walk, with some of the most beautiful mountains in Norway all round us.
We got on very well with the assistance of an Ordnance map and compass, till we came to the river Hinögle, after passing Hinögelid Sæter. The bridge here was not in the place marked on the map, so that after crossing it we had some trouble in finding Fly Sæter, and might perhaps have perished miserably like the Babes in the wood, had we not opportunely met a mediæval fisherman in a red night-cap, looking like one of the demons in ‘Rip van Winkle,’ who was going thither and conducted us. We arrived at seven o’clock, and appeased our hunger with the usual meal of trout and coffee, and such cream!
The sæter was a long low house, with three little rooms and only two windows. Its legitimate tenants were a very nice man and his equally nice wife and three children; but there were some occasional visitors here to-night in the shape of ourselves, our three men, the mediæval angler, and another traveller, twelve altogether to be apportioned among four beds; and to make matters worse, the rooms were continually invaded by sheep, pigs, and goats, of which there were a large stock.