The daughter of a forester, and completely spoiled by her father, who yielded to all her whims, Raghilda was at the same time the torment and the happiness of her affianced lover. If he climbed the heights, and gathered the most beautiful mountain flowers as a tribute to her charms, that very day the fantastic beauty would be seized with a severe headache, and have quite a horror of perfumes. Did he bring her game from the forest, she "could not comprehend," she would say, "how any man could leave a pretty young girl to go and kill the poor hares." One day he procured, at great expense, an assortment of necklaces and gold rings from Europe. He expected this time, at any rate, to be recompensed for his pains; but Raghilda merely declared that she much preferred to these rich presents the heavy silver ornaments that decorate Norwegian females. But she, nevertheless, took care to adorn herself with the despised gifts, to the intense envy of the other young girls her companions.
According to universal Wermeland usage, Raghilda kept bees. From morning to evening she tended her hives, and the insects knew her so well, that her presence did not scare them in the least, but they hummed and buzzed around her without testifying either fright or anger.
Daniel, as our readers may imagine, never visited his mistress without busying himself among her bees. One day he took it into his head that a high wall, standing just before the hives, deprived them in part of the heat of the sun, and compelled the insects to fly too high to gain the plain, and collect their store of perfumed honey. He proposed to Raghilda to diminish the height of the offending wall by some feet. At first the young girl would not entertain the idea, merely because it came from her lover; but she at length ceded to his reasonings, and the wall was diminished in height.
For several weeks Daniel and Raghilda congratulated themselves on the steps they had taken. The full heat of the sun marvelously quickened the eggs of the queen-bee, without reckoning that the journey of the little workers was shortened by one-half. But, alas! one fatal morning, when the young girl placed herself at her window to say good-day to her dear hives, she beheld them overturned, crushed, deserted. The honeycombs were broken all to pieces, and the ground was strewed with the bodies of the unfortunate insects. Upon Daniel's arrival, he found his lovely Raghilda weeping despairingly in the midst of the melancholy ruins.
The latter had thought of nothing beyond the loss of her bees, her own sorrow, and, above all, of her discontent with Daniel, and his pernicious advice concerning the wall. Her lover, on the contrary, vowed vengeance against the spoiler.
"I am," said he, "the involuntary cause of your unhappiness, Raghilda, and to me it belongs to avenge you. These traces of steps are no human footmarks, but the impressions of a bear's paw. I shall take my gun, fasten on my skidars, and never return until I have killed the brigand."
Raghilda was too sorrowful for the loss of her bees, and too furious against Daniel for his imprudent advice about taking down the wall, to make any reply, or even turn her head for a parting glance. Her lover left her thus, and hastened, his heart full of rage, to take his wooden skates, called skidars in Norway, and set forth in quest of the bear.
Tissjoebergist could not have proceeded far without this singular chaussure. These skidars are of unequal size; that which is fastened by the leathern straps to the left leg is from nine to twelve feet long, while to the right they do not give more than six or seven. This inequality procures ease to the hunter when he wishes to turn round on broken ground; permitting him to lean with all his weight upon the shorter skate, fabricated of solid materials. The skidars are about two inches in width, weigh from ten to fifteen pounds, and terminate in highly raised points, in order to avoid the obstacles that they might encounter. The wearer slides with one, and sustains himself with the other. The sole is covered with a sea-calf's skin, with the hair outside; this precaution hinders retrograde movements. When the hunter is compelled to surmount difficult heights, he does not lift his foot, but proceeds nearly as we do upon the skates of our country. He holds a stick in each hand, to expedite or retard his course, and carries his weapons in a shoulder-belt. Upon even ground, it is easy to progress with the skidars, and a man can accomplish forty leagues in twelve hours. But, in the midst of a country like Wermeland, alternately wooded, flat, mountainous, and marshy, strewed with rocks and fallen trees, the use of these skates requires much courage, address, and, above all, presence of mind. Daniel, habituated to their use from infancy, skated with prodigious hardihood and celerity. Quick as thought, he would now descend the almost perpendicular face of a mountain, then surmount a precipice, or clamber the steep sides of a ravine. A slight movement of his body sufficed to avoid the branches of trees, and a zigzag to steer clear of the rocks strewn upon his path. His ardent eye sought in the distance for the enemy he pursued, or searched the soil for traces of the brute's paws. But all his researches were fruitless.
After three fatiguing days, passed without repose or slumber, and almost without food, he returned to St. John, in a state more easy to comprehend than describe. Raghilda, during these three days, had caused the wall to be built up again, and was now occupied in arranging the new hives with which Aulic-Finn, Daniel's rival, had presented her, after having filled them with bees by a process equally hardy and ingenious. There was, in consequence of this, so violent a quarrel between the engaged lovers, that Tissjoebergist returned to Raghilda the ring which she had given him one evening during a solitary promenade on the umbrageous banks of the lake Rada. The young girl took the ring, and threw it with a gesture of contempt among the bee-hives.
"There!" said she, "the bear may have it. He will not fail to come, for he knows that he may ravage my hives with impunity."