she moved into the hall, where the sheriff's wife, always an invalid,
sat wrapped up in her shawl, she could not but say to her and the
judge's wife that the young lady's reckless manner of running--so that
you could even see the stockings above her shoes--smacked rather much
of being free. But she was sure Mrs. Silje did not find it in the least
unbecoming. She remarked sharply, "She had herself gone so many times
on the sunny hillside with the other girls, raking hay in her smock
before she was married to the trader."
Ma, indeed, gave Inger-Johanna an anxious hint as soon as she could
reach her.
"You must not run so violently, child. It does not look well--you must
let yourself be caught."
"By that chief clerk--never!"
Ma sighed.
They kept on with the game till tea time, when those who had been
missing after dinner again showed themselves in a rested condition,
ready to begin a game of Boston for the evening.
"But Jörgen--where is Jörgen?"
In obedience to the call, somewhat pale and in a cold perspiration, but
with a bold front, he came down from the office building, where he had
been sitting, smoking tobacco on the sly with the sheriff's clerk and
"the execution horse," whose racy designation was due to his unpopular
portion of the sheriff's functions.
The game of Boston was continued after supper with violent defeats and
quite wonderful exposed hands, between the judge, the captain, the
sheriff, and the attorney.
In the other room Ma sat uneasy, wondering when father would think of
breaking up--they had a very long journey home, and it was already ten
o'clock. The sheriff had urged them in vain to remain all night; but it
didn't answer this time; Jäger had definite reasons why they must be
home again to-morrow.
She sat in silence, resting her hopes on the sharp little Mrs.
Scharfenberg, trusting she would soon dare to show herself in the door
of the card room.
But it dragged on; the other ladies were certainly resting their hope
on her.
She nodded to Inger-Johanna. "Can't you go in," she whispered, "and
remind your father a little of the time--but only as if of your own
accord?"
Finally at eleven o'clock they were sitting in the carriage--after
the sheriff had again asserted, on the steps, his privilege of an old
man towards the young ladies. He was a real master in meeting all
the playful ways they had of escaping in order to be saved from the
smacking good-by.
The chief clerk and Candidate Horn went with the carriage to the gate.
"It was neither for your sake nor mine, Ma," said the captain.
He was driving, but turned incessantly in order to hear the talk in the
carriage, and throw in an observation with it. Jörgen and Thea, who
had kept modestly quiet the whole day, but had made many observations,
nevertheless, were now on a high horse; Thea especially plumed herself
as the only soul who had succeeded in escaping the sheriff.
And now they were on the way home in the light, quiet July night, up
hill and up hill--in places down, foot by foot, step by step, except
where they dared to let the carriage go faster as they came to the
bottom of a hill.
A good level mile or two, where they could all sit in the carriage, was
passed over at a gentle jog-trot. It was sultry with a slightly moist
fragrance from the hay-cocks, and a slight impression of twilight over
the land--Great-Ola yawned, the captain yawned, the horses yawned,
Jörgen nodded, Thea slept, wrapped up under Ma's shawl. Now and then
they were roused by the rushing of a mountain brook, as it flowed
foaming under a bridge in the road.
Inger-Johanna sat dreaming, and at last saw a yellowish brown toad
before her, with small, curious eyes and a great mouth--and then it
rose up, so puffed up and ungainly, and hopped down towards her.
The horses stopped.
"Oh, I believe I was dreaming about the sheriff!" said Inger-Johanna,
as she woke up shivering.
"We must get out here," came sleepily from the captain, "on the
Rognerud hills; Ma can stay in with Thea."
The day was beginning to dawn. They saw the sun bathe the mountain tops
in gold and the light creep down the slopes. The sun lay as it were
still, and peeped at them first, till it at once bounded over the crest
in the east like a golden ball, and colored red the wooded mountain
sides and hills on the west side, clear down to the greensward shining
with dew.
Still they toiled, foot by foot, up the hills.
On the Gilje lands the people had already been a long time at work
spreading out the hay, when they saw them coming.
"It is good to be home again," declared Ma. "I wonder if Marit has
remembered to hang the trout in the smoke."
Marit came rushing out of the door of the porch: "There was a fine city
traveller came this way last night! He who was here two years ago, and
had his shoes mended. I did not know anything better than to let him
sleep in the blue chamber."
"Oh, ho! Student Grip! I suppose he is on his way towards home."
Ma looked at once at Inger-Johanna; she fell into a reverie. She
stepped hurriedly out of the carriage.
"Jäger is going surveying to-morrow a long distance into the
mountains,--clear over to the Grönnelid _saeters_," Ma said to him,
when he came out of his room in the morning, "and there is so much that
must be done."
"So--oh--and to-morrow early." The student hesitated. "My plan is to
go home over the mountain, as I did last time--to get a little really
fresh air, away from the stuffy town air and the lawbooks."
"But then you could go with Jäger? It will be thirty-five to forty
miles you could go together up in the mountains--and for Jäger, it
would be a real pleasure to have company. You won't have any objection,
I suppose, to my putting up something for you to eat by the way?"
"Thanks--I thank you very much for all your kindness."
"She will not have me, that is plain," he muttered, while he wandered
about the yard during the forenoon; they were all asleep except the
mistress. But he did not come here to escort the captain.
In the afternoon, when it began to grow a little cool, the captain,
Inger-Johanna, Jörgen, and Student Grip took the lonely road to the
mill. Great-Ola and Aslak, the crofter, went with them--something was
to be done to the mill-wheel, now that the stream was almost dry.
They stood there studying eagerly how the wheel could best be raised
off the axis.
"That Jörgen, that Jörgen, he has got the hang of the wheel!" exclaimed
the captain. "You can get Tore, the joiner, to help, Ola, as soon as
you come back with the horses from the mountain--and let Jörgen show
you how: he understands it, he does--if it is only not a book, he is
clever enough."
"You will have to take hold of your forelock and try and cram, Jörgen;
do as you did with the rye-pudding--the sooner it is eaten, the sooner
it is over," said Grip, to comfort him.
"Look here, I came near forgetting the fish-lines for to-morrow. You
will have to go down to the store this evening, Jörgen. We catch the
trout ourselves up there, as you will see," said the captain, turning
to Grip.
"Oh--oh--yes," he puffed, while they were sauntering toward home
together. "I certainly need to go to the mountains now, I always come
down again three or four pounds lighter."
"I have wandered about that part of the country from the time I
was a schoolboy," remarked Grip. "We must put Lake Bygdin into the
geography--that it was discovered only a few years ago, in the middle
of a broad mountain plateau, which only some reindeer hunter or other
knew anything about."
"Not laid down on any map, no--as blank as in the interior of Africa,
marked out as unexplored," the captain pointed out. "But then there is
traffic going on between the districts, both of people and cattle, and
the mountains have their names from ancient times down among the common
people."
"True, the natives also knew the interior of Africa, but on that
account it is not called discovered by the civilized world," said Grip,
smiling. "I always wondered what could be found in such a mysterious
region in the middle of the country. There might be a great deal there:
valleys entirely deserted from ancient times--old, sunken timber halls,
and then wild reindeer rushing here and there over the wastes."
"Yes, shooting," agreed the captain; "we get many a tender reindeer
steak from over there."
"It was that which attracted me, when I met the reindeer hunter two
years ago: I wanted to explore a little, to see what there was there."
"Exactly like all that we imagined about the city," exclaimed
Inger-Johanna.
"You ought to go with your father part of the way over the mountains,
Miss Inger-Johanna--see if you could find some lofty bower."
"That is an idea, not at all stupid," broke in the captain, "not
impossible, not at all! You could ride all the way to the Grönnelid
_saeters_."
"Ah, if you could carry that through, father!" she exclaimed earnestly.
"Now I have also taken a fancy to see what there is there--I believe we
always thought the world ended over there at our own _saeter_ pastures."
"I have some blankets on the pack-saddle, and where they can get a
roof over my head there will be room enough for you too.--Come, come,
Morten, will you let people alone!" The captain took out a roll of
tobacco and held a piece out to the stable goat, that was coming,
leaping, towards them from the yard. "There, mumble-beard--he will have
his allowance, the rascal.--Ma," he called, when he saw her coming from
the storehouse, "what would you say if I should take Inger-Johanna with
me to-morrow? Then they will have company home on Friday with Ola and
the horses--she and Jörgen."
"But, dear Jäger, why should she go up there?"
"She can pass the night at Grönnelid _saeter_."
"Such a fatiguing trip! It is absolutely without a path and wild where
you must go."
"She can ride the horse a good ways beyond the _saeter_. Svarten will
go as steady as a minister with her and the pack-saddle--both on the
mountain and in the bog. I will take the dun horse myself." He had
become very eager at the prospect of taking her with him. "Certainly,
you shall go. You must put a good lot in the provision bag, Ma. We must
be off early to-morrow at five o'clock. Tronberg will join us with a
horse farther up, so there will be a way of giving you a mount also,
Grip."
Grip started on a run with Jörgen towards the yard, finally caught him,
and drove him in through the open kitchen window.
The captain, with his neck burned brown, toiled, red and sweating in
his shirt-sleeves, in the mountain fields up under Torsknut.
The packhorses went first with Inger-Johanna and all the equipment, and
by the side of the captain walked some farmers who carried their coats
on sticks over their shoulders on account of the heat, and eagerly
pointed out bounds and marks, every time they stopped and he was to
draw some line or other as a possible connection.
They had passed the night at the Grönnelid _saeters_ and been out on
the moors making a sketch survey at five o'clock in the morning, had
ridden over flat mountain wastes among willow thickets, while the
horses, step by step, waded across windings of the same river.
Now they stopped again after a steep ascent to wait for Tronberg, whom
they had seen below on the hills.
The captain took out his spy-glass, and after a cursory glance over
the shining icy fields which lay like a distant sea of milk, turned it
farther and farther down.
The perspiration rolled in great drops off his forehead and eyelids, so
that the glass was blurred, and he was obliged to wipe it again with
his large, worn silk handkerchief.
Then he rested the spy-glass on the back of the packhorse, and held it
still a long time. "That must be the Rognelid folk, after all, who are
moving there west of Braekstad heights. What do you say?"
The people to whom he turned needed only to shade their eyes to agree
with him that it was the opposite party whom they were to meet the next
morning at Lake Tiske. But they were too polite fellows to express it
otherwise than by saying in a flattering manner, "What a spy-glass the
captain has!"
During this surveying business he was borne, so to speak, on a royal
cushion by the anxious interests of both parties to the contest; it
contributed to the pleasure he took in his trips in the mountains in
summer to feel himself in that way lifted up by their hands.
"Have you been fishing, Tronberg?" he shouted when the head of the
subaltern's "Rauen" appeared nodding down in the steep path. "Trout!
Caught to-day?"
"This morning, Captain."
The captain took up the string and looked at the gills. "Yes, they are
to-day's."
The subaltern took off his hat, and dried his forehead and head. "One
could easily have fried the fish on the rocky wall in the whole of that
pan of a valley over there that I came through," Tronberg said.
"Fine fish. See that, Grip,--weighs at least three pounds."
"Goodness sake, the young lady here!" exclaimed the subaltern,
involuntarily bringing himself up to a salute when Inger-Johanna turned
her horse round and looked at the shiny speckled fish which hung on the
pack-saddle.
But old Lars Opidalen, the one who had asked for the survey, gently
passed his coarse hand over hers, while he counted the trout on the
willow branch. "Can such also be of the earth?" he said, quietly
wondering.
"Help the young lady, Lars, while she dismounts: it is not well to ride
any longer on this smooth bare rock."
The path ascended, steeper and steeper, with occasional marshy
breathing places in between--it was often entirely lost in the gray
mountain.
The mournful cry of a fish eagle sounded over them. It circled around,
cried, and went off when Jörgen shouted at it. It must have had a nest
somewhere up on that rocky wall.
The captain's shotgun was brought out, and Tronberg attempted a shot,
but could not get within range. If he could only lie in wait for it
behind the great stones up here!
The eagle whirled around again near them with broad, outspread wings.
Suddenly there was a report up above on the slope strewn with stones,
and the eagle made some vigorous, flapping strokes with its wings; it
struggled so as not to fall down.
The shot had gone through one wing, so that daylight could be seen
through the hole in the feathers. The bird evidently found it difficult
to preserve its equilibrium.
"What a shame!--it is wounded," exclaimed Inger-Johanna.
"Who shot?" demanded the captain, taken aback.
"Jörgen ran off with the rifle," Tronberg replied.
"Jörgen! He can't make me believe it was his first shot, the rogue!
But he shot himself free from a thrashing that time--for it was a good
shot, Tronberg. The rascal! He has been most strictly forbidden to
meddle with guns."
"Forbidden indeed," murmured Grip. "Is it not remarkable, Miss
Inger-Johanna, it is always the forbidden thing in which we are most
skilful? It is exactly these prohibitions that constitute our most
potent education--But that is going the way of villains in growth, and
leaves its marks behind--makes men with good heads but bad characters."
Grip and Inger-Johanna walked ahead with the horses. A strange, hazy
warm smoke lay below over the marshes in the afternoon: it veiled the
lines there. Up here on the mountain the air was so sparkling clear.
Foot by foot, the animals picked their way over the piles of stony
débris between the enormous fallen masses which lay, scattered here
and there, like moss-covered gray houses, with now and then a fairy
forelock of dwarf birch upon them, while on the mountain ledges still
hung yellow tufts of saxifrage.
"Only see all this warped, twisted, fairy creation. You could say that
life is really turned to stone here,--and yet it bubbles up."
He stopped. "Do you know what I could wish, Miss Inger-Johanna?" There
was no longer any trace of the strain of irony which usually possessed
him. "Simply to be a schoolmaster!--teach the children to lay the first
two sticks across by their own plain thoughts. It is the fundamental
logs that are laid the wrong way in us. They ought to be allowed to
believe just as much and as little as they could really swallow. And
to the door with the whole host of these cherished, satisfactory
prohibitions! I should only show the results--mix powder and matches
together before their eyes till it went into the air, and then say, 'If
you please, Jörgen, so far as I am concerned, you can go with the two
things in your pocket as much as you like: it is you, yourself, who
will be blown into the air.' It is the sense of responsibility that is
to be cultivated while the boy is growing up, if he is to be made a man."
"You have an awful lot of ideas, Grip."
"Crotchets, you mean? If I had any talent with the pen,--but I am so
totally dependent on word of mouth. You see, there are only four doors,
and they are called theology, philology, medicine, and law, and I have
temporarily knocked at the last. What I want there, I don't know. Have
you heard of the cat which they put into a glass ball and pumped the
air out? It noticed that there was something wrong. It was troubled for
breath; the air was constantly getting thinner and thinner; and so it
put one paw on the hole. I shall also allow myself to put one paw on
the draught hole--for here is a vacuum--not up in the skies with the
poets, of course. There it lightens and shines, and they write about
working for the people and for freedom and for everything lofty and
great in as many directions as there are points on a compass--but in
reality, down on the earth--for a prosaic person who would take hold
and set in motion a little of the phrases--there it is entirely closed.
There is no use for all our best thoughts and ideas in the practical
world, I can tell you; not even so much that a man can manage to make
himself unhappy in them.
"And so one lives as best he can his other life with his comrades, and
re-baptizes himself in punch with them every time he has been really
untrue to himself in the tea parties. But taste this air--every blessed
breath like a glass of the finest, finest--nay, what shall I call it?"
"Punch," was the rather short answer.
"No, life! With this free nature one does not feel incited to dispute.
I am in harmony with the mountain, with the sun, with all these crooked
tough birch-osiers. If people down there only were themselves! But
that they never are, except in a good wet party when they have got
themselves sufficiently elevated from the bottom of the well. There
exists a whole freemasonry, the members of which do not know each other
except in that form, or else in Westerman's steam baths when Westerman
whips us with fresh birch leaves in a temperature of eighty degrees.
The bath-house was our fathers' national club, did you know that?"
"No, indeed; I am learning a great many new things, I think," she said,
with half concealed humor.
"Listen, listen! The golden plover whistling," whispered Jörgen.
The sound came from a little marshy spot which was white with cotton
grass.
They stood listening.
"Did you ever hear anything so tremendously quiet," said Grip, "after a
single little peep. There are such peeps here and there in the country.
Abel, he died, he did--of what? Of drink, they said"--he shook his
head--"of vacuum."
He was walking in his shirt-sleeves, and flung the willow stick, which
he had broken off while he was talking, far down over the rocky incline.
"There, Captain, see the line, as it has been from ancient times for
Opidalen," shouted old Lars--"straight, straight along by the Notch,
where we shall go down and across the lake--straight toward Rödkampen
on Torsknut--there where you see the three green islands under the
rocks, Captain." He shook his stick in his eagerness. "For that I shall
bring witnesses--and if they were all living here who have fished on
our rights in the lake, both in my father's and grandfather's time,
there would be a crowd of people against their villainies in Rognelien."
The afternoon shadows fell into the Notch, where the ice-water trickled
down through the cracks in the black mountain wall. Here and there the
sun still shone on patches of greenish yellow reindeer moss, on some
violet, white, or yellow little clusters of high mountain flowers,
which exemplified the miracle of living their tinted life of beauty up
here close to the snow.
"There comes Mathis with the boat," exclaimed old Lars.
The boat, which was to carry them over to the shelter, crept like an
insect far below them on the green mirror of the lake.
The going down was real recreation for the captain's rather stout body,
short of breath as he was, and the prospect of being able to indulge
in his favorite sport, fishing, contributed greatly to enlivening his
temper.
"We are coming here just at the right time: they will bite," he
suggested.
When they embarked in the square trough, which was waiting for them
down by the fishing-hut, he had the line ready. He had already, with
great activity, taken care of the bait, carried in a goat's horn.
Those of the train who could not be accommodated in the boat went
around the lake with the horses. They saw them now and then on the
crags, while they rowed out.
"What do you say to a trial along the shore there in the shade, Mathis?
Don't you think they will take the hook there?--We are not rowing so
straight over at once, I think," said the captain slyly.
Under the thwarts Mathis's own line was lying; and Inger-Johanna also
wanted to try her hand at it.
The captain put the bait on for her. But she would not sit and wait
till they reached the fishing place; she threw the line out at once
and let it trail behind the boat, while, as they rowed, she, off and
on, gave a strong pull at it.
"See how handy she is," exclaimed the captain; "it is inborn--you come
from a race of fishermen, for I was brought up in the Bergen district,
and my father before me. If I had a dollar for every codfish I have
pulled out of Alverströmmen, there would be something worth inheriting
from me--What! what!"
A swirl was heard far behind in the wake. Inger-Johanna gave a vigorous
pull; the yellow belly of a fish appeared a moment in the sunlight
above the surface of the water.
She continued, after the first feverish jerk upon the line, in a half
risen position, to pull it in.
When she lifted the shining fish high upon the edge of the boat, she
burst out into a triumphant cry, "The first fish I have ever caught!"
Grip took the fish off the hook, and threw it far off. "Then it shall
also be allowed to keep its life!"
The captain angrily moved his heavy body, so that it shook the boat.
But that the ill-timed offering to the deep was made for the honor of
the apple of his eye greatly mitigated the stupidity.
And when they got in under the knoll, where he cast his line, he
suddenly sang a verse from his youthful recollections of the Bergen
quarter, which had slumbered in him for many a long year.
_I lay basking in the sun,
While the boat was drifting in the current,
I heard the sillock and climbed into the top,
I was giddy with my dream.
I awoke wet through,
And the thwart was floating,
While the boat was drifting in the current._
His deep bass came out with full force in the silence under the knoll.
The lake was like a mirror, and the captain took one trout after
another.
Torsknut, with patches and fields of snow on the summit, stood on its
head deep down below them, so that it almost caused a giddy feeling
when they looked out over the boat-rail. And when they arrived under
the cattle station, the steep green mountain side, with all the grazing
cattle, was reproduced so clearly that they could count the horns in
the water.
"Nay, here the cows walk like flies on the wall," said the captain. "If
the milk-bucket falls up there, it will roll down to us into the boat."
The shelter was, in fact, nothing more than a little mud hut on the
rocky slope, and a little wooden shed, with boulders on the roof, and
a hole in it. There the captain was to be quartered, and Inger-Johanna
was to sleep till the sun rose, and she, with Jörgen, Great-Ola, and
Svarten, should go back again to the Grönnelid _saeters_.
They had eaten supper--the trout and an improvised cream porridge--and
were now standing, watching the sun set behind the great mountains.
The captain was going about on the turf, in slippers and unbuttoned
uniform coat, smoking his pipe with extreme satisfaction. He stopped
now and then and gazed at the sun playing on the mountain peaks far
away.