"No, indeed; I am learning a great many new things, I think," she said, with half concealed humor.
"Listen, listen! The golden plover whistling," whispered Jörgen.
The sound came from a little marshy spot which was white with cotton grass.
They stood listening.
"Did you ever hear anything so tremendously quiet," said Grip, "after a single little peep. There are such peeps here and there in the country. Abel, he died, he did—of what? Of drink, they said"—he shook his head—"of vacuum."
He was walking in his shirt-sleeves, and flung the willow stick, which he had broken off while he was talking, far down over the rocky incline.
"There, Captain, see the line, as it has been from ancient times for Opidalen," shouted old Lars—"straight, straight along by the Notch, where we shall go down and across the lake—straight toward Rödkampen on Torsknut—there where you see the three green islands under the rocks, Captain." He shook his stick in his eagerness. "For that I shall bring witnesses—and if they were all living here who have fished on our rights in the lake, both in my father's and grandfather's time, there would be a crowd of people against their villainies in Rognelien."
The afternoon shadows fell into the Notch, where the ice-water trickled down through the cracks in the black mountain wall. Here and there the sun still shone on patches of greenish yellow reindeer moss, on some violet, white, or yellow little clusters of high mountain flowers, which exemplified the miracle of living their tinted life of beauty up here close to the snow.