“Martin,” she said, “you look into its eyes.”
Martin did not see anything remarkable in the calf’s eyes.
“You kill him as soon as ever morning comes,” said the woman. “I won’t handle no crittur with eyes like human beings.”
They killed the calf and buried it.
“Such foolish womenfolks,” Martin Lyhus pooh-poohed; but he had to give in; for his wife was at one with the maid in the matter, and you know the ways of womenfolks....
Only that was not the end of it all.
“Drople’s” milk had such a queer taste that no one in all Lyhus farm would drink it. They could only use it for cheese and such-like, and the next autumn the skin of “Drople” hung inside out on the back wall of the barn.
Something else happened the summer after “Drople” was killed. It was at the Lyhus Mountain farm, which lies in a wooded valley west of Ré Valley, and elks used to live there in summer.
One night the dairymaid saw a head in the forest, half a human head and half an elk’s head it was, poking out from a closely grown spruce tree. She saw nothing else but the head, nobody, only a tremendous pair of antlers.
The head stared at her and did not move, only stared. She felt as if she were standing in icy-cold water up to the chin. She whispered the name of Jesus towards the head and then took to her heels towards the hut, mumbling bits of the catechism while she ran, from the Ten Commandments to the Creed, and she was half dead when at length she was safe in the hut.