_Thursday, June sixteenth_.
The following day the boy travelled over Hälsingland. It spread beneath
him with new, pale-green shoots on the pine trees, new birch leaves in
the groves, new green grass in the meadows, and sprouting grain in the
fields. It was a mountainous country, but directly through it ran a
broad, light valley from either side of which branched other
valleys--some short and narrow, some broad and long.
"This land resembles a leaf," thought the boy, "for it's as green as a
leaf, and the valleys subdivide it in about the same way as the veins of
a leaf are foliated."
The branch valleys, like the main one, were filled with lakes, rivers,
farms, and villages. They snuggled, light and smiling, between the dark
mountains until they were gradually squeezed together by the hills.
There they were so narrow that they could not hold more than a little
brook.
On the high land between the valleys there were pine forests which had
no even ground to grow upon. There were mountains standing all about,
and the forest covered the whole, like a woolly hide stretched over a
bony body.
It was a picturesque country to look down upon, and the boy saw a good
deal of it, because the eagle was trying to find the old fiddler,
Clement Larsson, and flew from ravine to ravine looking for him.
A little later in the morning there was life and movement on every farm.
The doors of the cattle sheds were thrown wide open and the cows were
let out. They were prettily coloured, small, supple and sprightly, and
so sure-footed that they made the most comic leaps and bounds. After
them came the calves and sheep, and it was plainly to be seen that they,
too, were in the best of spirits.
It grew livelier every moment in the farm yards. A couple of young girls
with knapsacks on their backs walked among the cattle; a boy with a long
switch kept the sheep together, and a little dog ran in and out among
the cows, barking at the ones that tried to gore him. The farmer hitched
a horse to a cart loaded with tubs of butter, boxes of cheese, and all
kinds of eatables. The people laughed and chattered. They and the beasts
were alike merry--as if looking forward to a day of real pleasure.
A moment later all were on their way to the forest. One of the girls
walked in the lead and coaxed the cattle with pretty, musical calls. The
animals followed in a long line. The shepherd boy and the sheep-dog ran
hither and thither, to see that no creature turned from the right
course; and last came the farmer and his hired man. They walked beside
the cart to prevent its being upset, for the road they followed was a
narrow, stony forest path.
It may have been the custom for all the peasants in Hälsingland to send
their cattle into the forests on the same day--or perhaps it only
happened so that year; at any rate the boy saw how processions of happy
people and cattle wandered out from every valley and every farm and
rushed into the lonely forest, filling it with life. From the depths of
the dense woods the boy heard the shepherd maidens' songs and the tinkle
of the cow bells. Many of the processions had long and difficult roads
to travel; and the boy saw how they tramped through marshes, how they
had to take roundabout ways to get past windfalls, and how, time and
again, the carts bumped against stones and turned over with all their
contents. But the people met all the obstacles with jokes and laughter.
In the afternoon they came to a cleared space where cattle sheds and a
couple of rude cabins had been built. The cows mooed with delight as
they tramped on the luscious green grass in the yards between the
cabins, and at once began grazing. The peasants, with merry chatter and
banter, carried water and wood and all that had been brought in the
carts into the larger cabin. Presently smoke rose from the chimney and
then the dairymaids, the shepherd boy, and the men squatted upon a flat
rock and ate their supper.
Gorgo, the eagle, was certain that he should find Clement Larsson among
those who were off for the forest. Whenever he saw a stock farm
procession, he sank down and scrutinized it with his sharp eyes; but
hour after hour passed without his finding the one he sought.
After much circling around, toward evening they came to a stony and
desolate tract east of the great main valley. There the boy saw another
outlying stock farm under him. The people and the cattle had arrived.
The men were splitting wood, and the dairymaids were milking the cows.
"Look there!" said Gorgo. "I think we've got him."
He sank, and, to his great astonishment, the boy saw that the eagle was
right. There indeed stood little Clement Larsson chopping wood.
Gorgo alighted on a pine tree in the thick woods a little away from the
house.
"I have fulfilled my obligation," said the eagle, with a proud toss of
his head. "Now you must try and have a word with the man. I'll perch
here at the top of the thick pine and wait for you."