In the mountain hut there was nothing but that laboured breathing from the bed. Every once in a while Bjönn would sigh deeply as if he were greatly troubled. Then he would lick his jaws a few times and sleep on, while the moonlit square moved across the floor like a living thing.
A breath of wind soughed round the walls—hush—sh—sh; a loose window pane let in a tiny draught.
Then the dog’s head was raised instantly, suddenly as when a wild animal is disturbed in his lair. Bjönn was awake and alert. Eyes glowing, nostrils alternately large and small. He smelt some scent which that breath of air had carried into the hut.
He jumped on to the floor with a soft thud and stood with both forepaws on the window-sill. His triangular ears were stiff with eagerness; he saw something out there, growled deep down in his throat as if in anger. What did he see?
Suddenly he left the window and stood by the door. With an impatient bark he scratched the door to get out. Realising the futility of that, he rushed back to the window and the floorboards groaned beneath his weight. Again he stood up, his forepaws on the sill, howling as if in pain. What did he see out there?
In the bog below the pasture there was an elk. No bush could be more immovable than he. The elk seemed to sleep or to listen for something. His antlers appeared to float on the silvery lake below—full of shining silver bowls gently rocking on its surface.
Gaupa sat up in the bed. There must be something very special to make Bjönn carry on like that....
He could see through the window from where he sat, and it seemed to him that never before were air and mountains so fiery yellow and so strange-looking. They seemed to him to be burning with fever....
Farthest away and highest up he saw the sky, blue and teeming with stars. Below there swam a mountain, revealing its bristling back, and the slope was wrapped in a misty veil. Nearer to him at the bottom of the valley the lake flamed so brightly as to hurt his eyes, and on the bog nearer still he saw ... he saw——