When the girls had ended, we all laughed at the droll turn out of Sun,
Moon, and Co. from the cat's maw; and I was just going to repay them
with a Scotch story, when there came a great knock at the door.
Who could it be? said the girls. Father and mother would not come up
from the dale in such weather. Who could it be? Perhaps one of the Hill
folk. Perhaps a Huldra.
"Nonsense, lassies!" said Anders; "even if it were anything uncanny, we
have guns enough here to fire a shot over a whole pack of them, and men
enough to fire them too. Don't stand dawdling there, Karin, but open the
door."
Karin did as she was bid, and drew back the wooden bolt.
"My!" she cried, "if it isn't Peter the Forester! Come in, Peter. Come
in."
In strode Peter, a strapping fellow, long past youth, but still hale and
hearty. His tight-fitting breeches and hose showed a well-knit frame;
over his many-buttoned jacket he wore a loose cloak of russet woollen
stuff, "Wadmel," as they call it in the north of Scotland, and "Vadmal,"
as they call it in Norway. A broad, flapping wide-awake covered his
head, which on this occasion was tied down across the top, and under the
chin by a red cotton kerchief. On his shoulder was his rifle.
"Why, Peter," said Anders, "what brought you out in such Deil's
weather?"
"Well!" said Peter, "the owner of the sawmills down at the end of the
dale on the other side of the Fjeld, sent me up here last night to see
if I could mark down any reindeer for him; and so I came, though I told
him 'twas no use. The poor, silly body fancies the deer are like a pack
of barn-door fowls, that you can count morning and evening, as they go
out and come home to roost. He little thinks that the deer seen to-day
here, are to-morrow fifty miles off, or more; but as I wanted to cross
the Fjeld, and look at the forest on the other side down in the dale, I
said I would come and tell him if I saw any deer; and to make a long
story short, I came, and thought to get here last night; but just on the
edge of the Fjeld it grew dark as pitch, and so I crept into a reft in
the rocks, and spent the night as I best could. Luckily I had fladbrod
and gammelost, and a flask of brandy, else I should have fared badly.
But here I am, drenched to the skin, and nigh starved. Let me have a
pair of dry stockings, and a bowl of milk, and make myself comfortable.
But God's peace! I did not see you had English lords here. Good day!
Good day! After deer, too, no doubt. Did you see the deer yesterday?"
While Anders told him in a low voice who we were, in which story
Edward's mishap was sure to find a place, Peter took off his shoes and
stockings, and put on dry ones, and then draining off his bowl of milk,
sate before the fire to enjoy his pipe.
But Anders was not going to let him off so lightly.
"You must often hear and see strange things in the woods, and on the
Fjeld, Peter!"
"Aye! aye!" replied Peter, under a cloud of puffs, to this rather
leading question. "Aye, aye, I have both heard and seen many things.
Strange sounds and noises; sometimes for all the world like the sweetest
music."
"And what made it?" I asked.
"What made it!" scornfully replied Peter, "why the Huldror--the
fairies."
"The fairies! then you believe in the Good People?"
"Good or bad," said Peter, "and I think they are more often bad than
good, by their leave be it spoken; for to tell the truth, they say this
very Saeter was haunted in old days. Good or bad, why shouldn't I believe
in them? Doesn't the Bible speak of evil spirits? and if I believe in
the Bible I must believe in them."
I was too eager to get out of Peter what he knew about the Hill folk or
Huldror or fairies, to stop to discuss his dictum as to the Bible, so I
said,
"But do tell us what you saw yourself."
"Well!" said Peter, "once in August I was sitting on a knoll by the side
of a path, with bushes on each side, so that I could look across the
path down into a little hollow full of heath and ling. I was out calling
birds, for I can call them by their notes, and just then I heard a grey
hen call among the heather, and I called to her and thought, 'If I only
set eyes on you, you shall have gobbled and cackled your last.' Then all
at once I heard something come rustling behind me along the path, and I
turned round and saw an old, old man; he was a strange looking chap
altogether, but the strangest thing about him was that he had--at least
so it seemed to me--three legs; and the third leg hung and dangled
between the other two right down to the ground, and so he walked along
the path. When I say 'walked,' it wasn't walking either, but a sliding,
sloping motion, and so he went along, and I lost sight of him in one of
the darkest hollows of the glen. Now if that were not a fairy I should
like to know what it was?"
"Why an old gaberlunzie man, who helped himself along going down hill
with his stick behind him," said I. "Come, come, Peter, you must know
better stories than that. Tell us something that you have not seen, but
only heard tell of. Can't you tell us 'Grumblegizzard?'" For that, you
must know, was the name of a Norse tale that I had often heard of but
never yet heard.
"Yes! yes," said Anders. "Peter knows it, I'll be bound."
"Well!" said Peter, "it's a queer story, but here it is. This is the
story of