I.

A sunny-tempered little fellow was Hans, and his father declared that he

had brought luck with him when he came into the world.

“He was such a handsome baby when he was born,” said Inga, his mother;

“but you would scarcely believe it now, running about as he does in

forest and field, tearing his clothes and scratching his face.”

Now, it was true, as Hans’s mother said, that he did often tear his

clothes; and as he had an indomitable curiosity, and had to investigate

everything that came in his way, it was also no uncommon thing for him

to come home with his face stung or scratched.

“Why must you drag that child with you wherever you go, Nils?” the

mother complained to Hans’s father, when the little boy was brought to

her in such a disreputable condition. “Why can’t you leave him at home?

What other man do you know who carries a six-year-old little fellow

about with him in rain and shine, storm and quiet?

“Well,” Nils invariably answered, “I like him and he likes me. He brings

me luck.”

This was a standing dispute between Nils and Inga, his wife, and they

never came to an agreement. She knew as well as her husband that before

little Hans was born there was want and misery in their cottage.

But from the hour the child lifted up its tiny voice, announcing its

arrival, there had been prosperity and contentment. Their luck had

turned, Nils said, and it was the child that had turned it. They had

been married for four years, and though they had no one to provide for

but themselves, they scarcely managed to keep body and soul together.

All sorts of untoward things happened. Now a tree which he was cutting

down fell upon Nils and laid him up for a month; now he got water on his

knee from a blow he received while rolling logs into the chute; now the

pig died which was to have provided them with salt pork for the winter,

and the hens took to the bush, and laid their eggs where nobody except

the rats and the weasels could find them. But since little Hans had come

and put an end to all these disasters, his father had a superstitious

feeling that he could not bear to have him away from him. Therefore

every morning when he started out for the forest or the river he carried

Hans on his shoulder. And the little boy sat there, smiling proudly and

waving his hand to his mother, who stood in the door looking longingly

after him.

“Hello, little chap!” cried the lumbermen, when they saw him.

“Good-morning to you and good luck!”

They always cheered up, however bad the weather was, when they saw

little Hans, for nobody could look at his sunny little face without

feeling something like a ray of sunlight stealing into his heart.

Hans had a smile and a wave of his hand for everybody. He knew all the

lumbermen by name, and they knew him.

They sang as they swung the axe or the boat-hook, and the work went

merrily when little Hans sat on the top of the log pile and shouted to

them. But if by chance he was absent for a day or two they missed him.

No songs were heard, but harsh words, and not infrequently quarrels.

Now, nobody believed, of course, that little Hans was such a wizard that

he could make people feel and behave any better than it was in their

nature to do; but sure it was--at least the lumbermen insisted that it

was so--there was joy and good-tempered mirth wherever that child went,

and life seemed a little sadder and poorer to those who knew him when he

was away.

No one will wonder that Nils sometimes boasted of his little son.

He told not once, but a hundred times, as they sat about the camp-fire

eating their dinner, that little Hans was a child of luck, and that

no misfortune could happen while he was near. Lumbermen are naturally

superstitious, and though perhaps at first they may have had their

doubts, they gradually came to accept the statement without question.

They came to regard it as a kind of right to have little Hans sit on the

top of the log pile when they worked, or running along the chute, while

the wild-cat strings of logs shot down the steep slide with lightning

speed. They were not in the least afraid lest the logs should jump the

chute, as they had often done before, killing or maiming the unhappy man

that came too near. For was not little Hans’s life charmed, so that no

harm could befall him?

Now, it happened that Inga, little Hans’s mother, came one day to the

river to see how he was getting on. Nils was then standing on a raft

hooking the floating logs with his boat-hook, while the boy was watching

him from the shore, shouting to him, throwing chips into the water, and

amusing himself as best he could. It was early in May, and the river

was swollen from recent thaws. Below the cataract where the lumbermen

worked, the broad, brown current moved slowly along with sluggish whirls

and eddies; but the raft was moored by chains to the shore, so that it

was in no danger of getting adrift. It was capital fun to see the logs

come rushing down the slide, plunging with a tremendous splash into the

river, and then bob up like live things after having bumped against the

bottom. Little Hans clapped his hands and yelled with delight when a

string of three or four came tearing along in that way, and dived, one

after the other, headlong into the water.

“Catch that one, papa!” he cried; “that is a good big fellow. He dived

like a man, he did. He has washed the dirt off his snout now; that was

the reason he took such a big plunge.”

Nils never failed to reach his boat-hook after the log little Hans

indicated, for he liked to humor him, and little Hans liked to be

humored. He had an idea that he was directing his father’s work, and

Nils invented all sorts of innocent devices to flatter little Hans’s

dignity, and make him think himself indispensable. It was of no use,

therefore, for poor Inga to beg little Hans to go home with her. He had

so much to do, he said, that he couldn’t. He even tried to tear himself

away from his mother when she took him by the arm and remonstrated with

him. And then and there the conviction stole upon Inga that her child

did not love her. She was nothing to him compared to what his father

was. And was it right for Nils thus to rob her of the boy’s affection?

Little Hans could scarcely be blamed for loving his father better; for

love is largely dependent upon habit, and Nils had been his constant

companion since he was a year old. A bitter sense of loneliness and loss

overcame the poor wife as she stood on the river-bank pleading with her

child, and finding that she annoyed instead of moving him.

“Won’t you come home with mamma, little Hans?” she asked, tearfully.

“The kitten misses you very much; it has been mewing for you all the

morning.”

“No,” said little Hans, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and

turning about with a manly stride; “we are going to have the lumber

inspector here to-day? and then papa’s big raft is going down the

river.”

“But this dreadful noise, dear; how can you stand it? And the logs

shooting down that slide and making such a racket. And these great piles

of lumber, Hans--think, if they should tumble down and kill you!”

“Oh, I’m not afraid, mamma,” cried Hans, proudly; and, to show his

fearlessness, he climbed up the log pile, and soon stood on the top of

it, waving his cap and shouting.

“Oh, do come down, child--do come down!” begged Inga, anxiously.

She had scarcely uttered the words when she heard a warning shout from

the slope above, and had just time to lift her eyes, when she saw a

big black object dart past her, strike the log pile, and break with

a deafening crash. A long confused rumble of rolling logs followed,

terrified voices rent the air, and, above it all, the deep and steady

roar of the cataract. She saw, as through a fog, little Hans, serene and

smiling as ever, borne down on the top of the rolling lumber, now rising

up and skipping from log to log, now clapping his hands and screaming

with pleasure, and then suddenly vanishing in the brown writhing river.

His laughter was still ringing in her ears; the poor child, he did

not realize his danger. The rumbling of falling logs continued with

terrifying persistence. Splash! splash! splash! they went, diving by

twos, by fours, and by dozens at the very spot where her child had

vanished. But where was little Hans? Oh, where was he? It was all so

misty, so unreal and confused. She could not tell whether little Hans

was among the living or among the dead. But there, all of a sudden, his

head popped up in the middle of the river; and there was another head

close to his--it was that of his father! And round about them other

heads bobbed up; for all the lumbermen who were on the raft had plunged

into the water with Nils when they saw that little Hans was in danger. A

dozen more were running down the slope as fast as their legs could carry

them; and they gave a tremendous cheer when they saw little Hans’s face

above the water. He looked a trifle pale and shivery, and he gave a

funny little snort, so that the water spurted from his nose. He had lost

his hat, but he did not seem to be hurt. His little arms clung tightly

about his father’s neck, while Nils, dodging the bobbing logs, struck

out with all his might for the shore. And when he felt firm bottom under

his feet, and came stumbling up through the shallow water, looking like

a drowned rat, what a welcome he received from the lumbermen! They all

wanted to touch little Hans and pat his cheek, just to make sure that it

was really he.

“It was wonderful indeed,” they said, “that he ever came up out of that

horrible jumble of pitching and diving logs. He is a child of luck, if

ever there was one.”

Not one of them thought of the boy’s mother, and little Hans himself

scarcely thought of her, elated as he was at the welcome he received

from the lumbermen. Poor Inga stood dazed, struggling with a horrible

feeling, seeing her child passed from one to the other, while she

herself claimed no share in him. Somehow the thought stung her. A sudden

clearness burst upon her; she rushed forward, with a piercing scream,

snatched little Hans from his father’s arms, and hugging his wet little

shivering form to her breast, fled like a deer through the underbrush.

From that day little Hans was not permitted to go to the river. It was

in vain that Nils pleaded and threatened. His wife acted so unreasonably

when that question was broached that he saw it was useless to discuss

it. She seized little Hans as a tigress might seize her young, and held

him tightly clasped, as if daring anybody to take him away from her.

Nils knew it would require force to get his son back again, and that he

was not ready to employ. But all joy seemed to have gone out of his

life since he had lost the daily companionship of little Hans. His work

became drudgery; and all the little annoyances of life, which formerly

he had brushed away as one brushes a fly from his nose, became burdens

and calamities. The raft upon which he had expended so much labor went

to pieces during a sudden rise of the river the night after little

Hans’s adventure, and three days later Thorkel Fossen was killed

outright by a string of logs that jumped the chute.

“It isn’t the same sort of place since you took little Hans away,”

the lumbermen would often say to Nils. “There’s no sort of luck in

anything.”

Sometimes they taunted him with want of courage, and called him

a “night-cap” and a “hen-pecked coon,” all of which made Nils

uncomfortable. He made two or three attempts to persuade his wife to

change her mind in regard to little Hans, but the last time she got so

frightened that she ran out of the house and hid in the cow stable with

the boy, crouching in an empty stall, and crying as if her heart would

break, when little Hans escaped and betrayed her hiding-place. The boy,

in fact, sympathized with his father, and found his confinement at home

irksome. The companionship of the cat had no more charm for him; and

even the brindled calf, which had caused such an excitement when he

first arrived, had become an old story. Little Halls fretted, was

mischievous for want of better employment, and gave his mother no end

of trouble. He longed for the gay and animated life at the river, and he

would have run away if he had not been watched. He could not imagine how

the lumbermen could be getting on without him. It seemed to him that all

work must come to a stop when he was no longer sitting on the top of the

log piles, or standing on the bank throwing chips into the water.

Now, as a matter of fact, they were not getting on very well at the

river without little Hans. The luck had deserted them, the lumbermen

said; and whatever mishaps they had, they attributed to the absence of

little Hans. They came to look with ill-suppressed hostility at Nils,

whom they regarded as responsible for their misfortunes. For they could

scarcely believe that he was quite in earnest in his desire for the

boy’s return, otherwise they could not comprehend how his wife could

dare to oppose him. The weather was stormy, and the mountain brook which

ran along the slide concluded to waste no more labor in carving out a

bed for itself in the rock, when it might as well be using the slide

which it found ready made. And one fine day it broke into the slide and

half filled it, so that the logs, when they were started down the steep

incline, sent the water flying, turned somersaults, stood on end, and

played no end of dangerous tricks which no one could foresee. Several

men were badly hurt by beams shooting like rockets through the air, and

old Mads Furubakken was knocked senseless and carried home for dead.

Then the lumbermen held a council, and made up their minds to get little

Hans by fair means or foul. They thought first of sending a delegation

of four or five men that very morning, but finally determined to march

up to Nils’s cottage in a body and demand the boy. There were twenty

of them at the very least, and the tops of their long boat-hooks, which

they carried on their shoulders, were seen against the green forest

before they were themselves visible.

Nils, who was just out of bed, was sitting on the threshold smoking

his pipe and pitching a ball to little Hans, who laughed with delight

whenever he caught it. Inga was bustling about inside the house,

preparing breakfast, which was to consist of porridge, salt herring,

and baked potatoes. It had rained during the night, and the sky was yet

overcast, but the sun was struggling to break through the cloud-banks. A

couple of thrushes in the alder-bushes about the cottage were rejoicing

at the change in the weather, and Nils was listening to their song and

to his son’s merry prattle, when he caught sight of the twenty lumbermen

marching up the hillside. He rose, with some astonishment, and went to

meet them. Inga, hearing their voices, came to the door, and seeing the

many men, snatched up little Hans, and with a wildly palpitating heart

ran into the cottage, bolting the door behind her. She had a vague

foreboding that this unusual visit meant something hostile to herself,

and she guessed that Nils had been only the spokesman of his comrades

in demanding so eagerly the return of the boy to the river. She believed

all their talk about his luck to be idle nonsense; but she knew that

Nils had unwittingly spread this belief, and that the lumbermen were

convinced that little Hans was their good genius, whose presence averted

disaster. Distracted with fear and anxiety, she stood pressing her ear

against the crack in the door, and sometimes peeping out to see what

measures she must take for the child’s safety. Would Nils stand by her,

or would he desert her? But surely--what was Nils thinking about? He was

extending his hand to each of the men, and receiving them kindly.

Next he would be inviting them to come in and take little Hans. She saw

one of the men--Stubby Mons by name--step forward, and she plainly heard

him say:

“We miss the little chap down at the river, Nils. The luck has been

against us since he left.”

“Well, Mons,” Nils answered, “I miss the little chap as much as any of

you; perhaps more. But my wife--she’s got a sort of crooked notion that

the boy won’t come home alive if she lets him go to the river. She got a

bad scare last time, and it isn’t any use arguing with her.”

“But won’t you let us talk to her, Nils?” one of the lumbermen proposed.

“It is a tangled skein, and I don’t pretend to say that I can straighten

it out. But two men have been killed and one crippled since the little

chap was taken away. And in the three years he was with us no untoward

thing happened. Now that speaks for itself, Nils, doesn’t it?”

“It does, indeed,” said Nils, with an air of conviction.

“And you’ll let us talk to your wife, and see if we can’t make her

listen to reason,” the man urged.

“You are welcome to talk to her as much as you like,” Nils replied,

knocking out his pipe on the heel of his boot; “but I warn you that

she’s mighty cantankerous.”

He rose slowly, and tried to open the door. It was locked. “Open, Inga,”

he said, a trifle impatiently; “there are some men here who want to see

you.”