“Well, while you two are stuffing yourselves with sour milk, I’ll go and search for better fare,” said Fred, with a laugh as he left the hut.
“Good luck go with you,” cried Grant; “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Now, then, old boy,” he continued, turning to the owner of the hut, “could your goodwife make us a little porridge; I say, Sam, what’s the Norse for porridge?”
“Gröd, (Gröd is pronounced groot) I believe,” said Sam, who was still busy with the sour milk.
“Ah yes! gröd, that’s it,” said Grant, turning again to the old man; “gröd, gröd, get us some gröd, gröd, gröd,—d’ye understand?”
“Ya, ya,” answered the man. It would have been very strange if he had not understood, for though Grant addressed him in English the word gröd bawled so frequently into his ear was sufficiently comprehensible.
A fire was quickly kindled by the goodwife, a pleasant-looking elderly woman; and the black family-pot was soon smoking. The old man was smoking too, in less than five minutes, for Grant, in the fulness of his heart, gave him a pipe and a lump of tobacco.
This man was a fine specimen of a hale old Norseman. He wore a complete suit of brown homespun—excepting the jacket, which hung on a rusty nail in the wall. Knee-breeches and worsted stockings showed that even in declining years he had a good pair of legs. His grey hair hung in long straight locks over his shoulders, and on his head was the invariable red nightcap. The only weakness for finery displayed by this old hero was in the matter of buttons and braces. The buttons were polished brass of enormous size, and the braces were red. These were displayed to great advantage in consequence of a space of full four inches intervening between the bottom of his vest and the waist-band of his breeches.
While the gröd was being made, Fred Temple put up his fishing-rod and rambled away in search of a stream. He had not to go far. In about five minutes he found one that looked tempting. At the very first cast a large fish rose so greedily that it leaped quite out of the water and missed the fly. The next cast the fish caught the fly and Fred caught the fish. It was a splendid yellow trout of about a pound weight. In quarter of an hour Fred had three such trout in the pockets of his shooting-coat; in half an hour more the three fish were consigned by the three friends to the region of digestion!
And now the question of bed had to be considered. Grant settled it as far as he was concerned by throwing himself down on a pile of brushwood that lay in a corner, pillowing his head on a three-legged stool, and going off to sleep at once. Fred and Sam looked at the two beds. They were extremely dirty, and it was evident that straw was the bedding.
“Come, travellers must not be particular,” cried Fred, as he tumbled into his box.