Oscar ran after her and caught her and held her by the belt, and then she became serious. After a moment she covered her face and began to cry.
"Have I hurt you?" asked Oscar.
"No, no! It's nothing. I'm silly! Catch me again!" said Thora, and snatching his cap off his head she flew over the ruts and had leapt back into the boat before he came up with her.
When they returned to the Factor's, Aunt Margret, who looked cool and thoughtful, gave Oscar a letter which his mother had left for him. It was from Magnus, and it ran:--
"Dear Oscar:--I am glad to hear you have come home, and I wish I had been there to welcome you. You come in a good hour, for you must have heard of my good fortune about Thora. It was long before I could bring myself to grasp my happiness, because she was such a happy little girl, and it seemed selfish to take her from her father's house and everybody there so fond of her. But now that I have got her I feel new strength and am doing the work of three. I am so happy that nothing goes wrong with me, and I am like the anvil that could not be made angry though it were to have the heaviest blow. But I am longing to see you, and I write to ask if you will come to the sheep-gathering and bring Thora with you. Now I must conclude, for we are camping in the mountains and it will take this letter all its work to reach you in time.--Your affectionate brother, Magnus Stephenson."
Oscar read the letter aloud, and when he had finished it Thora could not see him distinctly for the vapor which floated before her eyes--like the chilling thaw-cloud that comes down the valley on a bright winter's day and hides the shining fells. But after a moment Oscar laughed--a little nervously--and said:
"Let us go by all means. I'll have Silvertop ready and bring him round at five in the morning."
VII
Next day Magnus awoke on the mountains in the paling light of the moon and the early glimmering of the dawn, and thought of Thora. He always thought of Thora first on waking in the morning, and her face was the last he saw at night when he closed his eyes under the stars. Seven days before, when he had set his face toward the fells, with his forty shepherds and eighty ponies, he had found it hard to turn his back on the lowlands, because Thora was there. But when by daybreak the following morning they reached the ridge of the mountains which divides the north district from the south; and in the grey light and the running mist they met the shepherds who had come up from the other side, and hailed and saluted them, and exchanged snuff and drank healths with them, and then turned about and parted, and begun to descend the way they came, his spirits rose rapidly, because every step was taking him back to Thora.
Five days thereafter Magnus and his men scoured the mountains, gathering up the sheep that had strayed during the summer; and every night when they pitched their tents in some sheltered place where there was water and grass among the lava and screes, and every morning when they rose at the first glimpse of daylight, he told himself he was one day and one night nearer to Thora.