In the short hot summer they helped the fishermen split the cod and spread them on the rocks to dry, or they made lemming traps and sought to see how many of the hated vermin they could capture.
In short, their life was active, hardy, and full of keen enjoyment; they were good-natured, and did not quarrel. Both were tall, finely grown as to muscle, but they would have been handsomer had they eaten less salt fish and more beef.
In a quaint little house at the foot of the mountains, near where tumbled in snowy foam a beautiful foss, lived an old woman and her grandchild Ilda. They were really tenants of Klaus's father; and in their wanderings the boys often stopped for a glass of milk or a slice of fladbröd (oat-cake), which the old woman was glad to give them. Ilda, too, in her red bodice and white chemisette, and her pretty, shy ways, was almost as attractive as the birds or beasts they were seeking. Neither the old woman nor Ilda often left their cottage, and so the boys were the more welcome for the news they carried.
They were able to give them the latest bit of gossip—how many men were off on the herring catch; if any strangers had come through the town in their carrioles on their way to the noted and beautiful Voring Foss and Skjaeggedal Foss (two water-falls of great renown); or who had the American fever, and were going to emigrate. Or they talked about the ducks and geese of which Ilda was so proud, and of the pigeons which Klaus had given her when they were wild, but which had grown tame and lovable under her gentle care. Then the old woman related in turn many a legend and fable, tales of the saintly King Olaf, or the doings of Odin and Thor.
Thus the days glided by, and the boys became men, and still they were together in their work as they had been in their play. In the rye fields and the potato patches they toiled side by side, and in the last nights of summer—the three August nights which they call iron nights, because of the frosts which sometimes come and blight all the wheat crop—they watched and waited, hoping for the good luck which did not always come to them; for the soil is a hard one to cultivate, and many are the trials which farmers have to meet in that bleak land. Soon after they became of age they were called upon to share the grief of their friend Ilda, whose grandmother died. After this they did not go so often to the cottage. One bright evening, however, as Lars was on his way up the mountain, he saw Klaus emerging from the little door beneath the shed of which they had so often sat. As they met, Klaus turned his face away, remarking, however, upon the beauty of the evening. Lars thought his friend's manner somewhat strange, and asked him if Ilda was well. Klaus said she was quite well—was he going to see her?
"Yes," said Lars. "I have some fresh currants from our garden, the only fruit which will grow in it, and I thought perhaps she might care for them, poor little thing. She is so lonely now!"
Klaus turned off down the road, whistling, while Lars went into the cottage. To his surprise he found Ilda crying, but supposing that the sight of Klaus had revived recollections which were painful, some sad thoughts of her grandmother, he tried to soothe her. She shook her head mournfully at his kind words, and told him that she had just done a cruel thing, that Klaus had asked her to be his wife, and she had said no to him. This came upon Lars very much like a thunder-bolt, for he had no idea that Klaus had any such wish; and much as he pitied his friend, he was not entirely sorry that Ilda had said no. So he asked her why she had refused to be Klaus's wife, when, with much embarrassment, she told him that she cared more for some one else.
Lars did not urge her to say any more, but leaving his currants, he followed Klaus down the mountain.
A few days after this, to the surprise of every one, Klaus bade his friends good-by, and took passage on the little steamer to Christiansand, from whence he would cross the Skagerrack, and sailing down the coast of Denmark, past Holland and Belgium, through the English Channel, he would be on the broad Atlantic, which was to bear him to a new home in the far western land.
Lars was not merely surprised, he was stunned, and thought his friend almost an enemy to go in that manner without consulting him, without even asking his advice or company. They had never before been separated. He could not understand it; and when Klaus bade him good-by he looked into his face as if to seek the reason for this strange conduct, but Klaus gave him no chance to ask it. He simply grasped his hand in silence, giving it a close clasp, and then he was off.