Gaupa listened. No, he could not hear that inexplicable muttering far away which belonged to the night and the unbroken silence. The brook deadened it. He felt how the forest about him was asleep, standing, eyes closed. All the same there was something, that restlessness which has no origin. He seemed to hear something breathing like a human being somewhere.
He remembered one incident after the other told of the remarkable animal who was standing unseen somewhere near him.
There was Anton Rud. Last autumn he was cutting resinous pine-stumps to distil tar, far up Tolleivsæter way.
One evening he kept on longer than usual, and it was dusk when he walked slowly down to the hut again.
He stopped to light his pipe, when he heard a cough below, a faint, dry cough, first once and then twice running. He heard also the noise of someone walking, and he sat down to wait, for it sounded as if someone were coming uphill.
But nobody came, nor did he hear that cough any more. He thought it strange, and called out aloud asking whether there was any human being.... No answer.
In the morning he went up to the same place to search the soil a little. He could not understand that cough—it sounded exactly like a consumptive coughing and clearing his throat. There were no traces of a human being, but he found elk spoors like Rauten’s, and he stopped stump-cutting that selfsame day.
Gaupa remembered that story and many others.
In the meanwhile Rauten and Bjönn remained in the same spot in the hollow, the dog looking steadily at the huge deer before him, his nozzle rested on his forepaws, and he looked like a long, narrow mound of grass or peat. Off and on something moved on the mound; Bjönn’s ears rose and lay down again.
A big bird, an owl, flew noiselessly over the forest, wings caressing the air.