“Think you I wish them too well, because I wish them a little better than the worst?” said Lavrans, smiling a little. “But come now, let us see what cheer Ragnfrid has sent with us to-day.” He took Kristin by the hand and led her with him. And as they went he bent and said softly: “I thought of your three small brothers, little Kristin.”
They peeped into the watch-house, but it was close in there and smelt of mould. Kristin took a look around, but there were only some earthen benches about the walls, a hearth-stone in the middle of the floor, and some barrels of tar and faggots of pine-roots and birch-bark. Lavrans thought ’twould be best they should eat without doors, and a little way down among the birches they found a fine piece of green-sward.
The pack-horse was unloaded, and they stretched themselves upon the grass. In the wallets Ragnfrid had given them was plenty food of the best—soft bread and bannocks, butter and cheese, pork and wind-dried reindeer meat, lard, boiled brisket of beef, two kegs with German beer, and of mead a little jar. The carving of the meat and portioning it round went quickly, while Halvdan, the oldest of the men, struck fire and made a blaze—it was safer to have a good fire out here in the woods.
Isrid and Arne gathered heather and dwarf-birch and cast it on the blaze. It crackled as the fire tore the fresh green from the twigs, and small white flakes flew high upon the wisps of red flame; the smoke whirled thick and black toward the clear sky. Kristin sat and watched; it seemed to her the fire was glad that it was out there, and free, and could play and frisk. ’Twas otherwise than when, at home, it sat upon the hearth and must work at cooking food and giving light to the folks in the room.
She sat nestled by her father with one arm upon his knee; he gave her all she would have of the best, and bade her drink her fill of the beer and taste well of the mead.
“She will be so tipsy she’ll never get down to the sæter on her feet,” said Halvdan, laughing, but Lavrans stroked her round cheeks:
“Then here are folk enough who can bear her—it will do her good—drink you too, Arne—God’s gifts do good, not harm, to you that are yet growing—make sweet, red blood, and give deep sleep, and rouse not madness and folly—”
The men too drank often and deep; neither was Isrid backward. And soon their voices and the roar and crackle of the fire were but a far off hubbub in Kristin’s ears, and she began to grow heavy of head. She was still aware how they questioned Lavrans and would have him tell of the strange things he had met with when out a-hunting. But much he would not say; and this seemed to her so good and so safe—and then she had eaten so well.
Her father had a slice of soft barley-bread in his hands; he pinched small bits of it between his fingers into shapes of horses, and cutting shreds of meat, he set these astride the steeds and made them ride over his thigh and into Kristin’s mouth. But soon she was so weary she could neither open her mouth nor chew—and so she sank back upon the ground and slept.