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Title: Children of the moor
Author: Laura Fitinghoff
Author of introduction, etc.: Clara Whitehill Hunt
Illustrator: Gustaf Tenggren
Translator: Siri Andrews
Release date: May 23, 2025 [eBook #76142]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927
Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE MOOR ***
CHILDREN OF THE MOOR
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN FROM BARREN MOOR]
CHILDREN
OF THE MOOR
BY
LAURA FITINGHOFF
TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY
SIRI ANDREWS
_With Illustrations by_
GUSTAF TENGGREN
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1927
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY SIRI ANDREWS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION BY CLARA WHITEHILL HUNT ix
I. SEVEN FRIENDLESS CHILDREN 3
II. WOLVES’ TRACKS 17
III. THE SPECTACLE MAN 26
IV. A BLEAK MORNING BOTH INSIDE AND OUT 39
V. ALL HANDS ON DECK 45
VI. THE SPECTACLE MAN ALONE AGAIN 52
VII. SEPARATED 55
VIII. WHERE IS MARTHA-GRETA? 63
IX. ‘HENNENLY TANA’ 67
X. A DAINTY LITTLE MAID 75
XI. TWO LITTLE MAIDS 78
XII. EARNINGS AND THE MONEY QUESTION 81
XIII. IN THE PLACE OF THE DEAD 89
XIV. PER-ERIK AND ANNA-LISA 100
XV. GHOSTS ON THE ICE 104
XVI. IN A DEN OF THIEVES 111
XVII. THE ‘WEDDING-FARM’ 121
XVIII. FLIGHT 127
XIX. FIRE 134
XX. IN THEIR OWN GREEN COTTAGE 146
XXI. MASTER AND MISTRESS 158
XXII. DRIVEN AWAY 174
XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING 183
XXIV. THE LAPLANDER’S HUT 187
XXV. AGAIN DEPENDENT ON THEMSELVES 193
XXVI. THE BRIDE 198
XXVII. A PROBLEM, A CHOICE, AND SORROW 210
XXVIII. MAGNUS AND GOLDEN HORN 216
XXIX. WHEN MAGNUS WAS LEFT ALONE 221
XXX. IN THE BERRY WOODS 226
XXXI. A STRUGGLE WITH OLD BRUIN 229
XXXII. UP AT A DAIRY FARM 237
XXXIII. QUARRELS AND RECONCILIATION 244
XXXIV. AGAIN IN THE PULPIT 254
XXXV. SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT 258
XXXVI. AGAIN A MESSAGE FROM MOTHER 262
XXXVII. MAGLENA 266
XXXVIII. ALL THE SEVEN FROM THE LITTLE GRAY COTTAGE 271
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CHILDREN FROM BARREN MOOR _Colored frontispiece_
HE WAS TOO STIFF AND FROZEN TO BE ABLE TO PUT WOOD IN
THE GRATE AND LIGHT A FIRE. ANDY DID IT FOR HIM 118
HERE UNDER THE TREE, WITH THE THICK BRANCHES RESTING
ON THE GROUND, THEY COULD BE SAFE 140
‘OLD BRUIN, OLD WOOLLY COAT, BIG FATHER,’ SHOOK HIMSELF 234
INTRODUCTION
When one has been watching for many years the apparent efforts of
story-book-makers and others to standardize the minds of our children,
to come upon ‘Children of the Moor’ is like finding a spring of water
in a thirsty land. It is surprising that a book which has run through
nine large editions in Sweden, and has been published in Germany,
Denmark, Norway, Holland, and England waited all these years for a
children’s librarian to go to Stockholm to discover it for American
children.
The author, Laura (Runsten) Fitinghoff, grew up in a large and wealthy
parsonage in Ångermanland, Sweden. She was one of five children in a
home ‘where music and spiritual nourishment were given the children
just as naturally as milk and bread were given other children,’ writes
her daughter. In the parsonage were entertained such distinguished
people as Jenny Lind, King Charles XV, and King Oscar II, but the poor
of the great parish, too, were welcome guests. During famine years,
when groups of starving people wandered over Sweden, none were turned
away empty-handed from Pastor Runsten’s door; and the scenes of one
particularly sad famine year so impressed a gifted daughter of the
house that the beautiful and moving story of ‘Children of the Moor’ was
written.
We are so accustomed to prosperity in America, and so tenderly careful
to protect our children from hardship, that there is danger of our
leaving out of their training the lessons which can be learned only
from suffering. How can a child be stirred to pity and sympathy and
unselfish giving who is not allowed even to hear that there are sad and
hungry people in the world? Child readers of ‘Children of the Moor’
will be deeply interested in the strange and eventful wanderings of
the brave children of this story; they will rejoice in the happiness
that finally comes to the brothers and sisters, and their mental
outlook will be wider, and their sympathies deeper for traveling, in
imagination, with these story-book companions.
We owe Miss Andrews a debt of gratitude for bringing the book to
America and for her beautiful translation of it.
CLARA WHITEHILL HUNT
BROOKLYN, 1927
CHILDREN OF THE MOOR
CHILDREN OF THE MOOR
∵
CHAPTER I
SEVEN FRIENDLESS CHILDREN
It is a year of famine up in Norrland.[1] ‘A year of famine’ means that
one is almost without food in those places where the flock of children
is large and the bit of ground small, from which one has to live.
[1] Norrland means the provinces farthest north in Sweden.
In good years there are gladness and laughter and noise wherever one
turns. One has sweet white turnips to eat, and peas in full pods grow
in the fields. Enough of bread, butter, cheese, and of other nice good
things is found even in tiny cottages and poor men’s homes.
But in _years of famine_ one sees little happiness. The snow lies on
the ground until toward midsummer. The turnips, which are planted as
seed in the ground, have hardly time to become as big as small potatoes
before the frost comes and makes the ground around them so hard and
crowded that they cannot grow any more. The pea-pods hang withered
like little blackened rags out in the pea-field--not a single pea in
them. The same with the ears of barley which used to hold themselves
so proudly on their high waving stalks; they hang on the short green
blades as if broken.
So you can understand that in a year of famine no grain and no peas
come to the mill to be ground, and if, on some farm higher up, the
frost has come more sparingly, the grain is still so weak and queer
that the flour becomes gray-black, and the pancakes one bakes of it are
like a thin mud puddle. One mixes the bark of trees in the flour to
make bread.
There is not much nourishment in such food. The children soon become
thin. Their rosy cheeks take on a grayish color and their eyes no
longer shine.
When the children in groups follow their parents down to the frost-free
districts to beg for food, they look like little old men and women. It
cuts one to the heart to see them.
* * * * *
During the awful year of famine late in the 1860’s, just such a group
came wandering down from Barren Moor away up in Norrland, a group of
seven children who wandered alone through lonely, impoverished winter
settlements. No father or mother accompanied them: seven emaciated
little ones, and the one who led them was only twelve years old. His
name was Andy, or really Anders.
The children were from Barren Moor, where the frost had been hardest.
Their father, weakened by bark bread and starvation food, had fallen
under a giant pine which he had been helping to fell in the woods, and
had been killed.
His wife, worn out by trouble and sorrow and hunger, died soon after.
Her greatest anxiety had been the children for whom she had worked and
suffered. She feared that they would have to go to the poor-house, or,
still worse, ‘be put up at auction’ for those who would take them for
the little sum of money the community would pay, in such a year when
all must earn in order to live.
But Andy promised: ‘We’ll go away from here, mother. We’ll put the
little girls on the sled and go from farm to farm like other grown-up,
wandering people. The school-teacher’s Carl says that his father says
that people in the settlements have both grain and potatoes. You’ll
see, mother, that there is enough for us too.’ And she was comforted.
Mother was hardly in the grave before the men of the parish came
together to put the children in the poor-house or auction them out.
But the day they came to the tumble-down cottage where they expected to
find the children, it was empty.
The shelter of boards near by, where the goat used to be, was also
empty. In the cottage, everything was scrubbed and tidy, as if orderly
grown folk had intended to leave it to others.
The children they came to seek had apparently set out the day before.
But the men agreed that they would not have to wait long before they
had them back again. Telephone and telegraph were not to be found up
there in the wilderness, and nothing could be done about finding them.
All the horses which belonged in the village were in the lumber camps.
And if they had been at home, who would have had time to go out on a
hunt for mere youngsters?
So the children wandered away undisturbed. But during the day the two
littlest girls, Brita-Carrie and Martha-Greta, began to whimper and
whine.
They did not cry because they were so cold that nose and hands were as
blue as cornflowers and toes so frozen that they could not stand on
their feet. No, they wailed and wept from hunger. They would have eaten
the hardest crust of bread or the tiniest potato with gusto. But the
road through the Great Woods was twelve miles long, and they had not
been within the door of a cottage all day long. They stayed away from
houses first for fear they would be held and sent to the poor-house,
and later of necessity, because there was not even the poorest kind of
hut in all the woods.
‘Come, Golden Horn,’ coaxed Andy at last, ‘I can’t stand hearing the
children cry like that. You’ll have to pull at her again, Anna-Lisa.’
‘Yes, but it is a sin the way we have torn at her for milk to-day,’
objected Anna-Lisa, who was ten.
‘But be quiet then, children. You’ll get another drop of milk. Golden
Horn, nice good little girl, come now so I can milk you. The children
are starving to death.’
Golden Horn, the thin yet splendid goat, emerged from the low firs
beside the road where she had made a good meal. She stood quietly
beside Anna-Lisa, who squatted down and drew a few streams of milk into
a small wooden bowl she held in her left hand.
‘Give me too! Give me too!’ whimpered Per-Erik and Magnus.
‘You should be ashamed! Big men like you. You, Per-Erik, are five years
old, and you, Magnus, six.’
‘No, sir, I’m five! Mother said so, and she gave me milk sometimes too.’
‘But you’ll be six at Candlemas, and it is only a week until then. We
men-folk mustn’t give up like that. Run ahead and hold on to Golden
Horn’s fur and then your hands won’t be cold.’
It was Andy who talked and commanded, and the little boys knew no other
way than to obey, and especially since Golden Horn, ‘who had human
sense,’ as they firmly believed, came close to them with her warm
woolly coat.
‘Bring Golden Horn here, so we can get warm too,’ cried the little
maids on the sled.
‘But you must be good. Think if mother heard her little girls whine
like that. You’ve just had milk that was both sweet and warm.’
‘But that was like nothing,’ wailed Brita-Carrie. ‘Like nonnin,’
repeated Martha-Greta, with tears in her great sorrowful eyes.
‘It was two spoonfuls each. And now soon we’ll come to some big farm
where you’ll get food. Sit down on the sled--you too, Maglena, then you
can warm each other. So there now, good little girls who don’t cry any
more. Mother would be so happy if she saw you.’
Andy stroked the blue-cold cheeks of his little sisters, tucked their
stiff cold hands in the ragged shawls they had tied crosswise about
their waists, and bundled the worn old sheepskin robe tightly around
their feet.
‘Now you push, Anna-Lisa, so we’ll get out of the woods. The
school-teacher’s Carl said that as soon as we saw what was left of
the hut where the Lapp Israel died, we shouldn’t be far from the
settlement.’
‘Yes, but he told me that wolves wandered around in the mountains. He
said I was crazy to go off with you.’
Anna-Lisa walked stooped forward and pushed the sled. Her tears fell on
the little sisters’ bundled-up heads. She sobbed so that it sounded as
though she hiccoughed.
‘I won’t bother to answer when you talk so foolishly,’ shrieked Andy in
a loud voice in order to make himself heard. He walked far ahead and
pulled with the rope over his shoulder. ‘Perhaps you think that Carl
would have taken care of you, given you food and clothes. Maybe they
don’t have the house full of children themselves.’
‘But then I wouldn’t have to starve, and freeze to death!’
‘Just as if they had wanted to have you there! You would have been in
the poor-house this day with leprous Barbara and crazy Lars.’
‘They don’t starve, and they don’t freeze to death either.’
‘Ugh, what a girl! This morning you ate all the water gruel you wanted,
and you had as much as we did of the goat’s-milk cheese and bread that
Sven Paul gave us. But because you can’t eat the whole day long you
whine and want to turn back, and to the poor-house besides.’
‘Well, where do you think we’ll come to now, then? I suppose you think
of taking us to the king. Boo-hoo-hoo,’ sobbed Anna-Lisa.
‘As far as that goes, I could do that too--and ask him to take you. You
could at least watch his goats for him. That would be something big,
that would, instead of sitting and staring in front of the poor-house
fire.’
‘How many goats do you suppose he has, the king?’ piped Maglena out of
the shawl opening.
She thought that at this talk about the king, life began to brighten a
bit. To tell the truth, she had agreed with Anna-Lisa the whole time,
though she thought it unfair that both of them should attack Andy, who,
she knew, had not tasted a bite before they left in the morning until
all the rest had had enough.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Andy, ‘how many goats the king has. Little-hut
people like us can have one, a cottager five or six, a big farmer
twenty or more.’
‘Goodness, then the king must have a hundred. I certainly can’t take
care of so many.’
Anna-Lisa let go of the sled, and wiped the tears out of her eyes.
Even Andy stopped, so the rope hung slack. He took off the moth-eaten
fur cap which had been father’s and wiped the sweat from his beautiful
forehead. His blue eyes shone indignantly as he looked back at his
sister.
‘Maybe the king has one hundred goats, maybe he has a thousand--yes,
just as many as a Laplander has reindeer. But do you think the king
hasn’t sense enough to figure out how many goats a little one like you
can watch? If he thinks you can take care of a hundred, then you can,
for then he has a special kind of easily watched goats, maybe from
Jerusalem, or maybe he has some wonderful goat watchdogs that can call
them together.’
‘Just think how fine you’ll be, Anna-Lisa. Maybe you’ll have shoes with
elastic sides and a silk shawl on your head and a skirt with little
roses on it so you will look like the briar-rose hill in the summer. To
think that you’ll be so fine!’
Maglena drew the shawl from her nose and tried to turn so she could
gaze at Anna-Lisa. A sweet little lass was Maglena, with golden brown
hair, bright and curly, and big deep blue eyes glowing with kindness.
It was as if she believed that Anna-Lisa, who walked behind and pushed
the sled, was already dressed in elastic shoes and a briar-rose dress
and silk headcloth, just because she imagined her so.
Anna-Lisa did not look especially attractive at this moment, with a
gray-black woolen scarf wound about her head and tied in a knot at the
back of her neck, with mother’s old striped jacket, the waist of which
reached her knees, and mother’s ragged run-down shoes. The hay which
they had stuffed in for warmth and filling stuck out through the holes.
It certainly was not easy to walk through the woods for many, many
miles in such an outfit, and it was perhaps not to be wondered at that
Anna-Lisa’s otherwise not unpleasant face with the blue eyes and light
hair now had a dark and bitter look.
She and her brother struggled on again with the sled. Anna-Lisa
muttered and mumbled to herself, but Maglena was in high spirits--in
her mind’s eye she saw the glorious existence of the king’s goatherd.
‘Per-Erik, Magnus, wait,’ she called to the two brothers. In ragged
Lapp shoes and father’s clothes, so hopelessly ill-fitting, they
pattered away, one on either side of the goat, their hands in her
coarse hair.
The boys stopped and waited. They were thoroughly disgusted, and tired
of the endless journey. ‘Men-folk,’ if you like, and five and six years
old as much as you please, hunger gnawed in small stomachs just the
same, the cold bit into fingers and toes, and the clothing had more
weight than warmth. But enough that they were sufficiently manly to
keep their whining and complaints to themselves, though tears ran down
the blue cheeks and small shoulders sometimes shook with suppressed
sobs.
‘What is it now?’ they said with manly superiority, when they were
beside the sled. ‘Shall we help you pull? You must be getting tired,
Andy.’
Magnus pushed up over his forehead the cap, which had been
grandfather’s at Sven Paul’s and which reached down over his ears, and
stealthily rubbed away any possible traces of altogether too unmanly
tears.
Andy spat in his hands, took hold of the rope so that it cut a deep
groove in the homespun jacket just on the shoulder, where, old and worn
as it was, it could not stand much more wear.
He strained and pulled as if the uphill they had just reached were a
slanting downhill stretch, and paid no attention to Magnus’s pitiable
suggestion. Even the rounded back seemed to show how miserable he
thought it was.
‘You can’t pull us all; any one knows that such talk is only boasting,’
said Maglena, who felt talkative and wasn’t so cold now that the little
sisters were squeezed close against her and were still, for they
had fallen asleep. ‘But now you’ll hear something nice. Do you know,
Anna-Lisa is going to be goatherd for the king! He has many hundred
goats, bigger than our Golden Horn.’
‘No goat is like Golden Horn, if you please,’ said Magnus, and looked
threateningly at Maglena.
‘Is that so? Have you seen goats from Jerusalem, maybe? They have horns
that look exactly like the moon when it is new and shiny, just like
that they shine. And they come in hundred thousands, and you can see
them running over the marshes and eating berries.’
‘If we only had some here! I could eat a thousand quarts,’ sighed
Per-Erik.
‘Yes, they eat berries.’ Maglena’s voice had a longing, dreamy sound.
‘They eat berries, for the whole marsh is full of them--and cream out
of big troughs; the king never thinks twice about it.’
‘And as much clap-bread[2] as we could carry on the sled,’ added
Per-Erik with a disapproving glance at the useless burden it then
carried.
[2] Clap-bread is a dark bread, large and round, almost as thin as
paper, folded twice to make four layers, dry, and almost
tasteless.
‘Of course the king’s goats eat clap-bread.’ Maglena continued her
description without in the least minding her brothers’ lack of interest
in the subject and their perpetual return to the question of food.
‘Yes, they eat clap-bread out of the little mangers.’
‘I thought they were out in the marshes just now. Goats certainly
aren’t indoors that time of the summer,’ remarked Andy, who, in order
to hear what Maglena said, even if it was silly, had pushed his cap up
sideways away from his ears so that it was on the point of falling off
his head altogether.
‘I suppose they must come in in the evening because of the mosquitoes
and insects and because of old Bruin. They can’t be free of old Bruin
even at the king’s, can they?’
‘Who’d want to be out and watch goats all night anyway, for that
matter?’ Anna-Lisa graciously entered into the conversation. ‘Be out
and watch goats when you should be in eating the pork that they fry at
the king’s so the grease runs and it smells so--yes, so that----’
Anna-Lisa could not find words to express how wonderful the smell of
fried pork was at the king’s.
‘And whole kettles full of potatoes,’ added Magnus eagerly.
‘That have cracked in their jackets, and that you can eat by the peck,’
said Per-Erik.
‘Yes, after the goats have had theirs. Listen. They come over the marsh
and they have eaten so much that they are just as round as the sow they
killed at Sven Paul’s this fall.’
‘Then they can’t jump so much either, and it will be easier to look
after them,’ said Anna-Lisa approvingly.
‘No, they walk just like the sow walked, waddling like that. And then
they climb up on the mountain. It is as bright as the rooster on the
church at the king’s dairy farm. And then the goats come there, you
see, and it is perfectly light from all those hundred thousand horns
that are like the moon when it is new.’
‘And how they’d milk, such goats!’ said Magnus with yearning in his
voice. ‘You could have some then.’
‘And make cheeses so that you’d burst, you could eat so much,’ from
Per-Erik.
‘Yes, but you see the king must have as much as he can eat first, and
all his men-servants and maids,’ said Maglena, all eagerness.
‘Besides, you know, children, the king can have much finer things even
than pork and potatoes and goat’s-milk cheese. He can have fresh salmon
if he wants it,’ said Andy loftily.
‘Not in the winter, though. When the salmon creeps along the bottom
of the river to the big water, then it isn’t good to take,’ remarked
Anna-Lisa.
‘In the winter he eats fine things, anyway.’ Andy settled the question
without allowing himself to be put out of countenance. ‘Then he eats
the finest food, and it is like a catechism party[3] every single day.’
[3] Catechism party. At certain times each year the people of the
parish gathered together to be examined by the parish minister in
the catechism as a test of their ability to read, and a feast
always followed.
‘Then does he have meat-balls and Christmas fish[4] and prune soup?’
questioned Maglena. Her eyes sparkled at the thought of such an
existence.
[4] Christmas fish. Codfish or ling steeped in lye and eaten at
Christmas time; it becomes very white and fluffy and is considered
a special delicacy.
‘Yes, and rice gruel as much as he is able to eat.’
‘And coffee, of course,’ put in Anna-Lisa. ‘And he never drinks a drop
without having bread to sop in it as much as he wants. Oh, but that
coffee would be strong and salty!’[5]
[5] In northern Norrland it is customary to salt coffee.
‘Oh, if we only were the king so we could have all that!’ cried Magnus
from the depths of his heart.
‘And then he has a big, big house, where it is nicer than the
parsonage, truly like a golden house; and then he knows where he
is going to sleep, not in such an old shack as ours was,’ muttered
Anna-Lisa.
‘As ours was! Isn’t that good enough? If we were lucky enough to own
that! With a little vegetable garden and the big fine bird-cherry tree.
If it were so that we could be there again, Golden Horn and all of us,
then I think that we should be just as well off as the king.’ Andy,
who spoke, looked earnestly at his brothers and sisters. ‘You see, it
is something that mother was there--and died there, and never shall we
find such a hut again.’
CHAPTER II
WOLVES’ TRACKS
It began to grow dark, and still the children were in the woods. Andy
was more and more inclined to stop and listen to their chatter, even
if it was so full of grumbling and complaining that it cut into his
heart like knives. But he himself was so tired, so hungry, and, too,
so thoroughly down-hearted. For, after all, it was he, Andy, who had
partly coaxed, partly forced, his brothers and sisters to leave a known
world thus alone and unprotected.
He had not been able to bear the thought that the little girls whom
mother had loved so tenderly should go to strange people. He was afraid
that the community would put them up at auction so that any poor
creature at all, in this year of need, could take them, only to get a
coin from the parish.
Even if the little girls, and the boys too, should get food at the
places they went to, it was not said that they would hear a kind word
or be taught what mother held to so sturdily. She had insisted that
they tell the truth, be courteous, and do well whatever they were set
to do. She had taught them not to whimper without cause, but to know
and understand that when they were alone without father and mother,
they still had One who cared for them, the good and powerful Father in
heaven.
Andy had felt, therefore, that it was altogether right and proper that
he, now that they were alone, should hold them together. Food and what
they needed he believed they would get when they reached the people and
settlements which had not suffered so much from the frost, and which
therefore would surely have something left for them.
But already, even the first day, he felt into what hardship he had
brought them. It was worst of all that he himself grew tired, since he
had eaten sparingly of both the water gruel, the goat’s-milk cheese,
and the bits of bread that kind people had given them after their
mother’s death: so tired that his legs bent under him, and the little
sisters on the sled seemed to him as heavy as blocks of wood.
All the signs told him that more snow was coming. The cold had broken;
he felt that, warm as he was pulling the sled, and knew it too because
the snow no longer creaked and shrieked under feet and sled-runners
as it had all day, ever since early morning, when, under the northern
lights and moonlight, they had left the little gray cottage, which,
with the dying fire gleaming through the little window-pane, had gazed
somehow sadly after the departing children.
That snow was coming and a real storm, Andy knew because of the
squirrels that darted like arrows between the firs. They took the cones
between their paws, threw off the sharp scales, and gathered together
the soft fragrant mass that remained. They ran with such dizzy haste
that it was hardly possible to follow their movements with the eye.
Even the wood-grouse, which in fair weather moves calmly and with
dignity, developed haste. Mountain-ash trees with berries were not so
plentiful in a pine forest, and to live only on pine and pine needles
was too monotonous, thought he. A real snowstorm could keep one in the
nest quite long enough.
Rabbits in white winter outfits checkered the snow with comical tracks,
three and three, in clusters like an embroidered pattern.
Fox tracks extended in a straight line with small round holes. And
then----!
Andy--who was awake to all signs in the woods, even where it was level,
laid waste by forest fires, or cut down--Andy suddenly saw big coarse
slightly oblong tracks in a row. Tracks that went abreast of each
other, tracks of several, of many feet, of _wolves’_ feet----!
He seized the rope anew, twisted it fast around cold-stiffened fingers,
and pulled his cap down over a forehead wet with the cold sweat of
agony and fear.
Then he turned square around to the children behind him.
‘You talk too much. We’ll sing now, instead, and then we’ll soon be out
of the woods. You start, Maglena.’
Maglena complied with her brother’s command without hesitation. In a
ringing voice she took up the song about Canaan:
‘What has my Jesus done for me?
Yes, He descended into Canaan.
Heavenly Canaan.
Come, let us go to Canaan.’
All the children sang, while Maglena with her sweet ringing voice led
the song.
They went on through the forest, gloomy in the early twilight, over
which arched a leaden gray sky, heavy with snow.
But now it seemed as though they had never thought of or known anything
except singing. The little girls, who sat enfolded in Maglena’s arms,
woke up, hungry, stiff, shivering with cold. They did not cry, though
at this moment they certainly wanted to, but hearing the others
singing, they joined in, as had been the habit in the little gray
cottage with mother.
‘Heavenly Canaan,
Come, let us go to Canaan.’
The song rang out so beautifully among the firs and pines. It was as if
an angel choir were advancing. The wood held its breath to listen. Not
a sound of yelping fox, of frightful hooting horned owl or small owl.
Only the children’s song was heard.
Andy sang, too, strongly and loudly. He kept his eyes lifted
beseechingly toward the dreary, comfortless sky. He sang in the belief
of help, though his strong voice really served best to reach and wake
the wolves, the child murderers, so many tracks of which he had just
seen abreast of each other.
Of course Andy had known before that the wolves in this winter of need
had begun to sneak about out in the open, and of course on stormy
nights when it was so cold that the corners of the cottage rumbled and
creaked he had heard their starved howlings in the wood.
But this far down in the settlements he believed that they would be
free of them. Andy thought that he and the children had gone so far
from the home parish that all conditions would be changed. And now to
see such tracks! One comfort was that _he alone_ understood what they
meant.
Now the Canaan song was over. He himself started a new song, and the
others joined in:
‘I know a land of purest light, which--’
Andy got no further.
‘Children! There is smoke, and sparks flying out of the chimney of a
house! Thank God, we are in the settlements, and I hear dogs barking.’
He seized the rope more firmly and began to run as if he were pulling
an empty sled. Anna-Lisa pushed the scarf up from her face so violently
that her eyebrows were pulled up toward her hair, giving her Chinese
eyes. She lifted her feet as lightly as though she already wore the
royal shoes.
But Maglena crept into her shawl hiding her whole face. She was shy
and afraid of strange people--especially those who lived out in the
settlements. One could never know whether they were as real people
ought to be, whether they looked as did the people in Barren Moor.
Maybe these had one eye in the back of the head and one in the
forehead; and maybe they walked on their hands and ate with their feet.
Ugh, but it was awful----! What sort of language would they talk, do
you suppose? The Barren Moor language was of course especially fine, so
you couldn’t really expect that such people outside the parish should
speak like that. After journeying as far as they had this day, any one
could understand that everything would be different and topsy-turvy.
Golden Horn felt as Maglena did, that it was most unpleasant to come to
strange people, where dogs could already be heard whining and barking,
and she fell back behind the sled with her nose between the sled and
Anna-Lisa, whom she imperiously pushed aside.
Per-Erik and Magnus were brave men from the very moment they heard the
barking of a village dog. They spat, to find out which one of them
could throw the spittle farthest, and they put their hands down into
mother’s old jackets which they had on as overcoats and convinced
themselves firmly that they thrust them into pockets. They chattered
and wondered if there was any one in the crowd who possibly had been
tired or frightened on such a day and on such a long dangerous journey.
For their own part, they had conducted themselves bravely. One isn’t
men-folk for nothing!
They were in such high spirits that they condescended to play with the
little girls. They made their very worst and ugliest faces at them, and
seized them by the throat to make them laugh.
In this happiness of spirit the children now came out of the forest
toward a village. The main road which they had followed through the
wood was marked closely on both sides with small firs. This was so that
one would be able to drive right in the road with the snow-plough when
there was so much snow that one could not otherwise know where the road
was.
Only a narrow path tramped down in the snow led to the nearest house,
a little gray cottage much like their own. It was not exactly easy to
get through with the sled. The gray dog there barked too, as though he
wanted to eat them all up. Perhaps it would have been better for them
to go to one of the big houses, which shone red with white corners
against the snow. But the little gray cottage up under the mountain
looked so safe and cozy that they went there without hesitation.
They understood the gray dog’s barking well. He said, like all gray
dogs, and such were to be found at nearly every house, that there were
people coming.
The children understood, too, by the barking that the dog did not have
much respect for them.
‘Bow-wow!--only trash! Shall I chase them away, I wonder!’
The gray dog was silent a moment. He stood still on the little steps
that took the place of a porch outside the cottage. Then he lowered his
head and growled thoughtfully.
‘Only little people, after all, puppies so to speak. Such can’t hurt
either people or house----’
He bowed his head, yelped meaninglessly, though dutifully, as a
conscientious gray dog always does. But then he got scent of the goat,
his eyes on Golden Horn who peeped out with her head between the
sled-posts and Anna-Lisa.
‘Aha, that’s another matter! Not ordinary people! Not with honorable
dog guard! They have a goat as a dog! Impudence!’
The gray dog began to bark, growl, and yelp as angrily as if he had
seen thieves in a church.
The children slackened their pace. None of them opened their mouths.
‘It is only because we are so poorly dressed,’ mumbled Anna-Lisa at
last. ‘If we came like Sven Paul’s children at catechism parties with
“bought” clothes and leather shoes, then the dog would fawn on us and
bark as if inviting us to come in and make ourselves at home.’
‘But, girl,’ objected Andy, ‘now we are _not_ coming to a catechism
party, but to ask people for food and a place to sleep. The dog sees
that, and knows that they don’t have much in the little cottage, and
that’s why he’s mad.’
‘Here--here!’ called Andy, and tried to get into the favor of the
angrily barking dog, who now rushed at them.
Maglena rolled out of the sled.
She tore the shawl from her head, ran toward the dog, and bent down
toward it with outspread arms.
‘Here--here! You aren’t mad at us! You can see that we are small and
alone!’
It seemed as though the dog understood her. He became quiet, sidled
uneasily sideways, yawned, as dogs do when ashamed. Suddenly he
pricked up his ears as if he had seen something threatening from the
mountain-side. And then he began to bark and yelp, with his head in
that direction, dry, affected, without meaning in his bark: barked like
that until the children were in the cottage.
CHAPTER III
THE SPECTACLE MAN
A fire burned in the grate when the children, clinging together,
creeping close to one another, came slowly into the cottage.
And yet Magnus was missing. He insisted that he couldn’t very well
leave the goat out there alone. Really he thought it only right that
Andy should receive the first blow among strangers. One was naturally
uncertain about what could happen in an altogether unknown place.
Maglena’s ideas had gradually become his too, so he stayed calmly
outside while the rest trudged away in.
‘Close the door!’ thundered a coarse voice.
If Andy at this moment had made half a movement toward the door, the
whole flock would have dashed out headlong, away from a roof over their
heads, warmth, and the hope of food, so frightened were they.
The roaring voice came from some one over by the hearth, who, exactly
as Maglena had foreseen, surely had one eye at the back of his head.
Yes, it looked almost as though both eyes were there, for big black
spectacles shone in the middle of the head. He had fiery red hair and
did not seem to need to turn around or even move to see who had come in.
But the children stood absolutely quiet, like a terrified flock of
bewildered little lambs. All of them stared at the gleaming black eyes
in the red head, and at the man’s hairy arms, bare to the elbow, which
rose and fell with something glittering and sharp which he held in his
coarse clenched hands.
‘It’s a Turk we’ve come to!’ whispered Maglena, her teeth chattering
with fear.
‘Then he’ll eat us up! I’ll go out and see what Magnus is doing to
Golden Horn, I will,’ said Per-Erik. He pushed the door open quietly
with his foot and glided out more hastily than he had come in.
Anna-Lisa was about to follow him; but she saw some cold mush on a
plate on the hearth, and the sight of that somehow held her fast.
Maglena and the little girls clung to Andy until he was almost lifted
from the ground. He whispered to them to be quiet--they ought to know
what was expected when you first come in; to stand at the door and be
quiet until spoken to.
But Martha-Greta, the smallest little girl, mother’s golden heart as
she had been so lately, could not be quiet. She was frightened, and she
was hungry, and she felt miserable in every way.
‘Mother!’ she screamed. ‘Ata-Eta ’ants to go to mother!’
And now all dams burst. She shrieked as though some one were sticking
her with knives. It was the most enticing signal to Brita-Carrie, who
had an even stronger voice than the smaller sister’s.
Maglena’s lips began to tremble suspiciously. She who, better than the
others, had known to what sort of people they were coming, she who
had foreseen these awful horrible people who had eyes at the back of
their heads, she became wild with fright at seeing these eyes stare
and stare, still, shining, black. She had known before that that
‘back-eyed’ man _was_ a Turk who could not think of anything pleasanter
than to take small children to slaughter and salt down for other Turks
to eat.
So Maglena could not hold out any longer either, but gave forth a
quivering cry not unlike the little girls’ shrieking.
Anna-Lisa--yes, it seems strange to tell this, for she was a big girl
in her eleventh year. Maybe the day’s burdens had been too heavy for
her or else that plate of cold gray mush she saw before her, without
hope of reaching it, caused it. At any rate, the sad truth is that even
she joined in the not especially harmonious choir which she, for the
sake of a change, enlivened with shrill, piping sobs.
Andy turned pale, he turned red. It is awful the way shrieking and
wailing can be catching. No one had ever heard it said that a man in
his thirteenth year could begin to--begin to----! No, even if he had
walked a whole winter’s day without food, dragged small sisters on
a heavy sled, and been in agony because of what he had brought them
into. Not even if he had been tortured with an agony of terror over the
approaching greedy wolves, and now lastly felt the shame of coming
with the whole flock to beg for food for them all and himself and
also--for a bed---- But still!
Andy was angry at the tears that wanted to come and at the disgusting
sobs which began to shake him. He clenched his fists and bit his teeth
to control what a man, who had many little ones to guide and take care
of, must control.
‘Children! But, children--are you crazy? We are with strangers! They’ll
drive us out if you keep on like that!’
Was it likely that the ‘children’ would be quiet after such a
trembling, half-sobbing warning? If Andy looked like that, and if he
sounded so queer and ready to cry, then there was real danger.
Oh, oh, what a wailing clamor arose!
‘Where are these people from who have such a dreadful way of greeting?
Good-day and God’s Peace is more customary.’
The Spectacle Man turned slowly around. Now all the children became
silent with astonishment. Can you imagine, he had eyes even on the
other side of his head, in his face like ordinary people, and he looked
at them with a heavy but not at all evil expression!
‘Who has had so little sense as to let out such little folks now in a
hard year, and when the wolf sneaks around the corners?’
Andy stepped forward as far as he was able with the heavy train of
small legs.
‘No one has let us out. We have come ourselves, because the little
house was empty of both father and--mother----’
Andy’s voice began to tremble alarmingly.
‘But your community must have some way of taking care of the poor. This
parish will just have to see that such a crowd gets back there.’
‘It is a hard year. Every one at home is poor. No one wants the little
girls except for the money--and mother was so careful of them.’
Andy was silent again--swallowed and swallowed--clenched his teeth.
‘So that’s the way of it.’
The Spectacle Man spat and whistled.
‘But you must have a poor-house, in the Name of Peace?’
He turned away round on the chair--the children began to tremble at the
coarse rumbling voice.
‘They’re always quarreling there, every one; the children wouldn’t
learn what mother wanted them to know. There wouldn’t be any one to
keep after them to remember what mother taught them. And then crazy
Lars is there, he talks shamefully; and leprous Barbara is there too.’
‘So that’s the way of it--and here I am alone in the house. They have
gone--all of them have gone. So that’s the way of it. And now maybe you
thought you’d get something here----’
A tremulous sigh shook the group as if from a single breast.
‘So that’s the way of it. Well, I have some cold mush and herring; yes,
you can put that on the grill there and fry it. And ale; you can have
ale with your mush, for you see I got a jug from the juryman when I
left to-day. And maybe there’s a little sirup left in the jar to mix
with it too. Such little folk maybe have nothing against sirup.’
A bright smile of relief flew like a ray of sunshine over the little
pale faces that, a while before, had been so troubled.
‘A little coffee too. Oh, well, that’s possible. Coffee, but without
cream or milk, for see--milk, you see, children, that you don’t have
when you sit in a back shanty and make shoes for the whole parish; then
you live on other drinks.’
The Spectacle Man stood up with a groaning sound. He leaned heavily
on a thick knotted stick he had beside him. It was plain that he had
rheumatism and it was hard for him to move. Besides, it was easy to see
that he was without a woman’s help in the cottage. In the firelight
could be seen how the sweepings were piled up in the corners. Herring
bones and potato shells were left on the table. In the one-time white
painted bed along one wall, the straw stuck out through the ragged
cover. The sheepskin pelt was worn bare, and the yellow striped
pillow-case on the bolster had certainly not been in the wash for many
a long day. The Spectacle Man, with much puffing, brought out salt
herring and bits of bread from the old blue corner cupboard with red
roses on the doors. He even took down a coffee-mill into which he put
roasted coffee from a birch-bark box.
‘Maybe I could grind it,’ said Anna-Lisa timidly. Already she stood
several steps nearer the plate of mush.
‘Then I’ll go out for a little more wood for the fire,’ added Andy.
Without waiting for an answer he was outside.
‘Please let me put the herring on the grill--I used to at home,’ said
Maglena eagerly.
‘Div me a b’oom an’ I ’weep the f’oor,’ piped Brita-Carrie, who
hungrily watched the herring begin to frizzle and sputter on the grill.
‘Ata-Eta ’weep f’oor too,’ eagerly from the smallest two-year-old, who
stretched out her hand for something to sweep with.
The Spectacle Man burst out into a grunting laugh. Who’d ever seen such
a little maid!
Andy came in with his arms full up to his nose, of wood from the
hillside where he had seen it when he came in.
Per-Erik and Magnus followed at his heels. They pushed the door shut
against Golden Horn, who for a second peeped in through the crack, but,
when she was left outside, gave forth a heartrending bleat.
Andy dropped the wood on the floor. He stood with downcast eyes; he had
completely forgotten, in all the strangeness about him, that a goat too
accompanied them.
And the Spectacle Man was angry.
What sort of a notion was this! Who had ever heard of dragging goats
along in the winter-time when one went out---- He was about to say
‘begging.’ But something in Andy’s earnest, steady eyes held him back.
‘The goat wouldn’t have minded being put up at auction, would it?’
‘Golden Horn is used to being with the children, and since she had kids
she milks so well. The little girls would have given out long ago if it
hadn’t been for her. I promised mother when she died that Golden Horn
should go with us. Mother knew that a goat can do a lot of good when
you don’t have any food for the little ones--and so I took Golden Horn
with us.’
‘She wouldn’t be happy with any one else either,’ assured Maglena
proudly.
‘Yes, and for that matter I’ve brought fodder along for Golden Horn, so
no one has to worry about that,’ said Magnus importantly, and strode
forward. He had stood and looked at the Spectacle Man, who for him,
who had seen him from the front at once, was an ordinary person with
eyes where they ought to be. Eyes which, especially for one who, like
Magnus, had looked at them by stealth, were only kind. Not like the
voice, which was coarse and frightening.
‘So that’s the way of it--still more little folk. Here one and there
another--two, three, four, five before. Are there just as many left
out there that are just as bold as these last two? They have carried
fodder for the goat! Cluck, cluck----’
It sounded as though the man were laughing.
‘Where does the little man think of keeping the goat to-night, if there
is only one--or maybe you have taken fodder enough for twenty goats?
Well, break the news right away if you have several.’
‘No-o, we have only one,’ assured Magnus with a wide, earnest glance up
at the peering eyes.
‘Do you keep her in bed or on the hearth, eh?’
‘It’s all the same to her. When it was real cold in the straw on the
floor where we boys slept, we took Golden Horn with us there. She
seemed to make it warm!’
‘Yes, and there she didn’t have to freeze outside. That’s what worried
you most,’ interposed Maglena.
‘So that’s the way of it--the goat needs to have a bed made for her.’
‘No-o, she doesn’t mind, ’cause she lies down, anyway, even if there
isn’t a bed,’ assured Magnus. ‘She’s never particular, is Golden Horn.’
‘Cluck, cluck.’ The Spectacle Man’s shoulders shook. ‘Maybe you’ll ask
her to step in and make herself at home with what we have to treat on.’
Magnus went to the door in greatest glee.
‘Please step in, Golden Horn, and make yourself at home.’
In stepped Golden Horn with head held high. She looked around among
the children, sighted Anna-Lisa who was whipping sirup in a bowl,
tripped up to her, and gave her a little push with her horns.
‘Goodness gracious, child! She wants to be milked. It’s that time
now--and the way we’ve pulled at her all day.’
A tender, caressing murmur rose among the children.
‘Good Golden Horn, nice doll, little pearl.’
They fell on their knees around her on the floor, stroking and petting
her as they had never caressed mother or each other.
‘She thinks we’re hungry, of course, the little girl.’ Maglena drew the
goat’s slender nose over her thin cheek.
‘So that’s the way of it--she thinks of such things too,’ clucked the
man who also gave the goat a caress over the back.
‘Yes, and now she has come with cream for the coffee we’re going to
have. It’s ready now,’ smiled Anna-Lisa, for whom the dream about the
cold mush seemed more and more a reality.
She lifted the three-legged coffee-pot from the flame in the grate;
and, as the custom was, added a couple of good pinches of salt and
poured in a little cold water to hasten the settling.
Andy and Maglena had cleared off the table. The mush plate and old mush
remains from the box out on the steps were set forth with the sirup
drink. The herring, which smelled freshly fried and was so salty that
it sputtered, was there too, and bread, truly as much as they could eat.
It was with great devotion that the children with folded hands read
grace before such a feast.
The Spectacle Man blew his nose and limped around the room, murmuring,
‘So that’s the way of it. There would have been just so many, but all
are gone.’
‘Isn’t Madam Goat going to be at the table?’ he questioned when he
bumped against Golden Horn, who stood meditatively by the fire and
chewed her cud.
‘Yes, if she may. She eats peelings and bones and everything that’s
left over. Here you are, Golden Horn!’
Magnus pushed down everything they could get along without and let the
goat eat at the same time that he himself ate.
Suddenly the little girls rolled down on the floor, sound asleep.
The Spectacle Man had gone out. Anna-Lisa poured coffee into unmated
but gorgeous cups which she had found in the cupboard.
It did feel good to get the nice warm coffee inside one after the cold
but still so welcome food.
The man came back with his arms full of straw. ‘I guess this will be
enough for both folks and animals.’
He spread out the straw on the floor, far enough away from the fire to
be out of reach of the sparks.
Golden Horn showed her appreciation by immediately nipping off some of
the empty ears and then proudly and gracefully stalking into the straw
and lying down for the night.
Andy remained at the table with bowed head and thanked God for the
food. Then he stood up, took the little girls one after the other,
peeled off their scarfs and shawl rags and laid them in the straw bed
with their heads against the goat’s warm fur.
‘So that’s the way of it--cluck, cluck.’ The Spectacle Man stood and
stared at the little ones there on the straw. Dear, sweet children they
were, with light curly hair, delicate little faces, though so pale, so
thin, with frost-bitten little noses.
He drew the cover from his own bed and wanted to put it over them. But
Andy held him back.
‘Please don’t; don’t take away from yourself. We have the sheepskin
robe out on the sled and the clothes we take off.’
‘I have a skin in the little room too. Take this one.’
The Spectacle Man went through a door behind the fireplace into what
was no doubt the ‘little room.’ He came out again with a really fine
skin over his arm. He stood a long time looking at the little flock of
children in the straw. They slept heavily in the same position in which
they had thrown themselves down. Pale little things, but so innocently,
tranquilly sleeping that it seemed to him that some of God’s angels
were in the house keeping watch over them.
Golden Horn lay in the middle of the group, chewing with half-closed
eyes and a disdainful superior attitude.
CHAPTER IV
A BLEAK MORNING BOTH INSIDE AND OUT
The little girls were awake earliest of all in the morning. That is,
except the Spectacle Man, Ladd-Pelle[6] as he was otherwise called when
he was sober, and who made really wonderfully fine shoes.
[6] Ladd-Pelle; pronounced Ladd-Pel’le. Ladd is the name of the
particular kind of shoe that the man made; his name was Per, or
Peter, from which comes the nickname Pelle; so, translated, he was
called ‘Shoemaker Peter.’
He had been up a long time. So surprised was he at being clear-headed
so early in the day that he went about clucking to himself with
pleasure.
The water for the mush was boiling in the kettle, and besides he had
washed a few potatoes so that the children could have some with their
salt herring.
Ladd-Pelle had not felt so light of heart in many years. He really
wondered how he had come to go home the evening before, he who usually
stayed over at the inn days at a time. Yes, it really was strange.
Already he sat hard at work, for he had orders for many pair of shoes,
enough to keep him busy both night and day. People still wanted more of
him.
‘Ita-Tawie,’ Martha-Greta’s voice was heard from the straw bed. ‘Up!
Tee new doll.’
‘Ita-Tawie,’ otherwise Brita-Carrie, was wide awake at once. She crept
on all fours over the others, still sleeping soundly, to Martha-Greta,
who too had worked her way over them all alone and then rolled over to
the fire. There she had found a stick of wood which she had wrapped up
in scarfs and a ragged apron, and now held up toward her sister with
proud happiness. ‘Tiss her!’
Brita-Carrie pushed out her little mouth as far as she could in order
to reach in through the many thicknesses to the wood itself, which sure
enough received a resounding kiss.
‘Has she had any milk?’ asked Brita-Carrie eagerly.
‘Nonnin.’ Martha-Greta shook her head with a troubled expression.
‘Nonnin ’tall.’
‘Wait, I div her, like mother dave little brother.’
She put the stick of wood close to her breast, looked down at it with
great tenderness, rocked slowly back and forth, and whispered, ‘Sing
now, Ma’ta-G’eta, and she go to s’eep.’
‘What hat my Jetut done for me. Hennenly Tana; yet, he tended to Tana.
Hennenly Tana.’
Martha-Greta was fully convinced that she sang correctly, ‘What has my
Jesus done for me.’ ‘Hennenly Tana’ meant ‘heavenly Canaan.’ Any one
who couldn’t understand that certainly didn’t have human understanding.
The children were all very proud that Martha-Greta, who was not two
years old, could ‘say everything she wanted to say,’ really ‘talk
plain.’
‘Dollie ’ants muk.’ Interpreted: ‘Dollie wants milk.’ That such food
or drink was given the doll when Brita-Carrie held it to her breast
did not seem to enter her mind. ‘Muk’ she must have; she, like Ata-Eta
herself, must be terribly hungry and thirsty.
‘Anna-Ita up! Ata-Eta ’ants muk an’ mus.’
Anna-Lisa, who sat up in the straw bed dazed with sleep, understood at
once that Martha-Greta wanted milk and mush. She looked up shame-faced.
When one is among strangers, as they all were, one must ask prettily
for what one wants, not demand it, no matter what it might be.
Andy was also quickly on his feet. His first thought was Golden Horn,
who was not in the cottage. For it was she who had milk for the little
ones.
He said good-morning to the host, who sat by the fire and drew the
waxed thread through the stiff homespun, and looked as though he
were alone in the cottage. Andy noticed with deep satisfaction the
preparations for breakfast on the fire.
But then he went out in real fright about the goat. One could never
know what had become of her when she got out in a strange place.
Andy could hardly open the door because of the awful west wind that
swept in between the mountains, roaring like thousands of wild animals.
The wind carried snow with it, so much snow that one could hardly hold
one’s eyes open and see what was in front of one--hardly see one’s hand.
Gray Dog had crept up on the step, but with eyes and ears wide open. A
good dog must be on his guard on just such stormy days when both wolves
and foxes and owls might seek their way to human dwelling-places.
To-day the dog had still another reason for being suspicious.
That goat, which went and swaggered as if it were a dog, had irritated
the gray dog almost into rabies when it actually went into the cottage
to stay all night. A dog with a sense of honor could not be in there in
such company and listen to that disgusting bleating. Now he had lain
and sulked and been offended all night. Such a monster with horns,
without a tail, and with the pupils of its eyes length-wise instead of
round in its head, was allowed to lie indoors when such a fine old gray
dog, who had protected the place night and day, and who had pulled his
master out of many a danger, must lie outside. In such a storm, too,
when no one ought to be able to drive out even a dog.
To think that that monster actually pleased to go into the house! And
then to see it come bounding out in the morning, as confident and bold
as though it had lived there always. The gray dog was so ashamed that
he crept under the step, for he really could not stand and bark at any
one that came _out of_ the cottage. The dog that could have acted in so
topsy-turvy and ill-mannered a way has certainly not yet been created.
But it was well to have eyes and ears open to see what became of one
who, unfamiliar and without a dog’s power of smell, set off outside the
yard in such weather.
Gray Dog barked, shortly and with suppressed spite, almost as if he
were laughing to himself.
He turned away his head, shook himself, and growled a trifle
threateningly when Andy came out and began to call and make a row. Time
after time the boy called the crazy name of ‘Golden Horn.’ If it had
only been ‘Brownie’ or ‘Goody’ or ‘Curious,’ but ‘Golden Horn’! Andy
climbed down from the step, wading in snow to his waist, and shaded
blinded eyes with his arm held up in front of him.
‘Golden Horn! Little goat! Where are you?’
Andy thought of the wolves’ tracks he had seen yesterday, and
remembered how much the wolf liked goat’s meat.
Not a trace of the goat in the snow. The storm roared so that Andy
actually felt how his voice was drowned in the din. That was why he
didn’t hear how Golden Horn bleated in answer to his calling.
For she had heard him long ago. But she thought she might as well
swallow the breakfast she had found in a ramshackle old shed before she
made herself known.
Sometime there must have been cattle in the shed. The withes hung down
in two larger stalls, and a little row of four smaller goat stalls
could be made out in one corner. It was coal black and terribly dirty
in there. Golden Horn would never, except in greatest need, have been
able to force herself to go in, but she had found some dried sheaves of
leaves in a boxed-off corner. She even found a few stalks of hay and
bran, those fine remains of flowers and leaves that fall from the grass
that is cut and dried for hay, and that cattle love to eat.
Well, Andy would have to flounder around in the snow out there awhile,
thought Golden Horn, and call and coax. He would not die of that.
But for all that she hurried her eating so that her jaws went like a
threshing machine. She no doubt had a little guilty conscience; but she
remembered, too, that she had to gather milk for the children in there
in the cottage.
Andy climbed through the snow up to his armpits. He had almost reached
the big highway. What should he do if he did not get milk for the
little girls? And how heavy and sad it would be to think that wolves
had torn their fine splendid Golden Horn to pieces!
‘Ma-a-a!’ Andy thought he heard. ‘Ma-a-a-a!’
He turned quickly, and almost had Golden Horn in his arms as she came
hopping and diving in the drifts.
‘Golden Horn, you mustn’t scare me like that!’ said Andy with an
alarming tremble in his voice. ‘You ought to know that it is you and I
who are responsible for all the little ones in there and we must keep
together.’
CHAPTER V
ALL HANDS ON DECK
The uneasiness and troubled spirits in the cottage changed to real
happiness when Andy and Golden Horn came in again. Anna-Lisa got more
than a quart of foamy warm milk from the goat. It was enough for the
mush and even to add to the water gruel. It seemed as though it was a
regular party.
But the way it looked in the strange cottage! Old ragged shoes that
Pelle was to mend thrown all over the floor; the straw scattered.
If the blessed fire had not burned on the hearth and lighted up the
room, darkness would have reigned indoors all day, for the inside of
the window was gray-black with dirt, and now the snow fastened itself
outside as well.
Andy and Anna-Lisa set to work to clean things up a bit.
Maglena searched out the brass comb in the knapsack. It was her duty
to-day to comb the hair of the little ones, who gave howl after howl
under her zealous efforts to make curly hair look sleek and straight
hair lie flat.
Then there were sore chilled toes and chafed little heels to be looked
after. A small birch-bark box was taken out of the knapsack. It was
full of homemade soft soap, the welcome gift of a neighbor at home.
It was great fun to splash and wash their feet with soft soap and warm
water. In spite of Anna-Lisa’s warnings, the children splashed so
violently that she deemed it best to soak the whole floor and, first as
last, to scrub it.
Andy, Maglena, and she took each a scrubbing broom. They sprinkled
sand over the floor, already flushed with warm water, put bare feet on
the brooms, and rubbed so hard that the splinters flew from the worn
darkened wood.
The floor had evidently not been washed in years, or since ‘they all’
had gone from the cottage and left the poor lame old man alone.
The little girls sat up in the old man’s bed and made dolls out of
sticks of wood and splinters. The little boys washed the wooden bowls
and wooden spoons and scraped the mush kettle with an ear-splitting din.
Ladd-Pelle was actually frightened at the number of ragged shoes the
children threw over to him at the fireplace. But he felt quite content
when he thought how welcome he would be when he came with them all
finished. Otherwise it was well known that Ladd-Pelle would rather
drink than work.
He stood up painfully, put the coffee-pot on the fire, and blinked
smilingly into the room.
‘Shall we have a cup of coffee, eh?--Good gracious,’ he mumbled to
himself, ‘the girl actually had sense enough herself to wash the
window.’
The children smiled at him, warm and rosy, as if they had been
fighting. The little girls sang their babies to sleep with soft,
sweetly ringing ‘Hennenly Tana.’
Magnus and Per-Erik pounded and scratched with knives and scrapers in
the iron kettle, laughing and bellowing:
‘Neptune he plays in the blue, blue waves!’
Not enough with that. They took up a verse that Andy did not like
because it seemed to be about him:
‘Andy was a cheerful fellow,
Busy as two ants, or more;
Quick was he as the quickest man,
And strong as any four.’
It seemed to be making fun of him, and he became angry and said they
might hit on a better song. And, besides, they needn’t scrape a hole in
the bottom of a stranger’s kettle.
‘The iron kettle will hold all right,’ Pelle intervened. ‘It’s so
pleasant to hear the children sing. They have never done that before.
Both the woman and the children quarreled all the time before they went
to America, and there I didn’t want to go. Well, there is such a storm
to-day that you’ll have to stay here, for you couldn’t even get to the
main road before you’d be buried in all this snow. But I don’t have
much to treat on, except spoiled flour for the mush, and herring, and
then coffee.’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ said Andy, as he straightened up. He had been
bending over, scraping the floor with birch-bark to make it white and
dry after the scrubbing.
‘We think it is so comfortable to stay here,’ added Maglena. ‘When we
get it ever so little cleaned up here, it will be almost like it was at
home, only there we had flowers in the window.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ continued Maglena. She actually started. ‘I brought
the cactus with me in the knapsack.’
She ran to the knapsack which hung on a hook near the fire, dug among
the stuff they had gathered together there, and got hold of a big sort
of horn, wrapped up in a scarf.
‘See! It’s still alive, think of it, the dear beautiful little cactus!
The earth is left too. Please give me a birch-bark box to put it in.’
Pelle pointed to where they were.
And Maglena put into one the rumpled plant, which then hardly gave
reason for the description ‘fine and pretty.’
She whispered eagerly a moment with the older brother and sister.
Shyly, with a solemn expression, she then went up to the host.
Maglena asked with a trembling voice if he would be so good as to
accept her sweet little cactus. The school-teacher had given it to her,
and there would be beautiful flowers on it, fiery red, and bigger than
a coffee-cup. But it had to be where the sun could shine on it through
the window--and it needed water every day.
Ladd-Pelle certainly did not know much about flowers. This one he
thought looked more like a beaver’s tail with sharp little needles on
it. But he did know enough to understand that the girl was giving away
something she prized very highly, so he raised his hand, though he had
no cap on to take off, and held out his hand to thank her.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Maglena, as royally condescending as though she
had given away a whole flower garden.
‘I don’t know at all what we’re going to do, ’cause I’m altogether out
of bread,’ wondered Pelle and pushed his glasses to the back of his
head. ‘You see, I didn’t use to bother very much about what I ate. That
was silly, but it’s true.’
‘If you only have flour, then we can bake,’ said Anna-Lisa airily. ‘We
can heat up the oven.’
‘Well, I do have flour, but it is spoiled, so I don’t know that you can
make bread of it.’
‘It was worse for us to make bread last winter and this year, when
we had to mix bark and straw in the dough,’ said Anna-Lisa eagerly.
‘Andy,’ she went on, ‘go after wood and heat up the oven. I saw a
kneading-trough in the cupboard awhile ago, that I’ll get. And you,
Maglena, take the kettle from the boys and put it over the fire, and
I’ll put water in it for the dough. It’s a good thing we have chalk
here, so we can whitewash the fireplace after we’ve baked.’
‘But,’ continued Anna-Lisa in a troubled voice, ‘it is too bad we
haven’t any old carpets to put on the clean floor.’
‘So that’s the way of it, that we are to live like fine folk. Well, go
into the little room and bring out the carpets that are there. Take the
sheepskin, too, so we can put it over the straw in the corner. Why,
it’s going to be just like Christmas. Yes, better, for that matter. I
haven’t kept much track of Christmas lately. Come, now, boys, and I’ll
show you how to make shoes.’
Magnus and Per-Erik were given waxed thread, bits of homespun, and
awls. It was wonderful beyond words to pull the thread high in the air,
force the awl through the hard cloth and leather, and instantly feel
like accomplished shoemakers.
The fire was soon burning in the oven. Anna-Lisa and Maglena struggled
with kneading the dough, and carving out thin cakes on the table.
Andy was responsible for the oven. He took the cakes of bread that
the sisters rolled out, pricking them with a pricker made of hen’s
feathers fastened together, which made the cakes thick with holes. Then
he pushed the cakes into the blazing oven and baked them one at a time
near the oven door, where the hearth was newly swept. He had to watch
carefully to turn and twist the cakes with the wooden baking-spade so
that they would not burn.
The little girls were, of course, included in the baking activities.
They had their own baking-table on a not too clean wooden chair. The
dolls slept with their wooden heads on the dirty pillow-case which was
going to be in the wash before evening.
Altogether there was a hubbub and rumpus in the cottage, life and
industry.
Dinner must be made, too.
Pelle came with a suggestion to make pea pancakes in the warm oven. He
had pork grease in a crock, so it would be a fine dinner with the fresh
bread. It was gray, of course, and hard, and so tough that one could
almost pull out one’s teeth with it, but in spite of that boundlessly
good, as bread generally is when the children have baked it themselves.
Golden Horn went out and found food as she had before. Afterwards she
had remains indoors too. Then she gave milk in quantities. Pelle had
been used to other things. Brandy had most often taken the place of
both food and drink here.
CHAPTER VI
THE SPECTACLE MAN ALONE AGAIN
The children had stayed with the Spectacle Man two whole days. They
laughed at themselves when they told him how he had scared them at
first: he who was pure kindness and fun.
The storm had ceased. One saw men driving the snow-plough over the
highway. Pelle and Andy had been out to try to tramp a path that far.
The next morning the children were to leave, and they went to bed
early. When they had fallen asleep, which was as soon as they touched
the straw, Pelle went out. He limped down to the village. People who
saw him said, ‘Now Pelle is going to the inn again.’
But Ladd-Pelle did _not_ go to the inn.
He bought meal at the store with the finished shoes he had with him.
He bought sugar and a little pork, also small wheat buns, fourteen of
them. He was thinking of the children and that they should have two
each the next morning before they left.
When he came home, he sat down to sew with the haste of despair. It was
late at night before he went to bed.
But then there were three new pairs of shoes beside the straw bed on
the floor.
The little girls had been practically without shoes on their feet,
which looked like pieces of meat, red and swollen, when Andy had taken
off the rags in the evening. And Anna-Lisa had had such blisters on her
heels that they had bled and she had cried when she loosened the ragged
shoes from her feet.
Pelle had now done everything he could for them. But he thought it was
hard to have them leave the cottage. It seemed as though both warmth
and light would leave with the children.
If he could only keep the goat, that fine animal who milked so well! It
would be easier to give up brandy, thought Pelle, if he had sweet milk
to drink whenever he was thirsty, after the salt-herring breakfast and
dinner. Besides, the poor children couldn’t drag a goat with them the
whole way, he thought, so he asked them if they would give up the goat
and leave it with him. He’d get money to pay for it. But it was not
to be expected that they would let Golden Horn go. She who gave them
warmth, food, who was their good friend, and who was old and homelike
to have along.
Father mustn’t be angry. But they wouldn’t give up Golden Horn for much
money, not for any price.
‘So that’s the way of it, that you are good friends of hers too, and
can depend on her. Well, then, I’ll have to try to get along without
her,’ said Ladd-Pelle resignedly.
‘It’s been so nice here, and many thanks for all of us.’ Andy put out
his hand and looked up at Ladd-Pelle with such a pure and earnest look
that he thought he could never bear being without them.
‘Oh, please, don’t forget that the little cactus needs sunshine and
water every day. When we come back again, I’ll have another big
beautiful plant for you, father,’ said Maglena. She, too, took his hand
and thanked him.
Of course Anna-Lisa thanked him. She could not fully show or say how
absolutely delighted she was over the new shoes.
The little girls were lifted up. Martha-Greta stretched out her arms,
puckered out her mouth into a pout. ‘Tiss fa’r--oo div Ata-Eta p’itt
s’oes.’
‘She wants to kiss you, she says, because you gave her pretty shoes.’
‘So that’s the way of it! And I, poor soul, not worthy to come near
such a God’s angel----’
Ladd-Pelle turned abruptly away from the children and went alone into
the cottage, empty, but now so neat. He sat down by the fire and
sniffed as though all joy in life had left him.
The gray dog, who had been happy to see the unpleasant company leave
and had joyfully wagged his tail as a farewell out on the step, now
whined mournfully and sympathetically when he found his master in such
low spirits in the cottage.
CHAPTER VII
SEPARATED
The little group of children passing through the mountain village
attracted little attention. It was altogether too common a sight in
those hard times to see whole starving households set out to beg for
food.
The Barren Moor children followed Ladd-Pelle’s advice and took
their way along the river. At first they were both frightened and
disheartened, and talked longingly about the Spectacle Man.
But it was so beautiful with so much snow; it was so free and jolly to
be out. Before long they were quite content and happy once more. It
had cleared, and the drifts stood in high banks along the roadsides.
They were so funny, too, the heavy snowdrifts. They lay like thick
white blankets on the roofs, blankets which hung away down against the
windows. Juniper bushes and low fir trees had comical high pointed
caps, and over the old fences the snowdrifts lay in folds like thick
woolly white garments.
What a lot there was to see this day! Red two-story houses and small
gray cottages they paid little attention to. All this was just as it
was at home in their own parish. But women, who climbed through snow
over their knees to come to the barns which lay sunken in the white
drifts, children who swept and shoveled steps and walks, and men who
were busy harnessing and getting ready to drive timber in the woods.
Toward noon the children went into a large red farmhouse near the
edge of the settlement. Here they were given food, bread, and boiled
herring. Even a bowl of buttermilk was set out for them on the hearth.
But they left, quiet and disheartened. The mistress, who had given them
of God’s loan, had looked so bitter, had thrown the food at them, and
muttered, so that they all heard it, that one was absolutely eaten out
of house and home by beggars from the mountains.
The master, who had come in and seen them eating, standing in a row
at the hearth, had said that such a crowd would be best off in the
poor-house, and that, if all his horses weren’t in the woods, he’d be
wise to take them back.
The children there looked as sullen and sour as though they had lived
in the poor-house instead of on a big farm where they were so rich that
they had six copper kettles on the shelf above the door and splendid
cupboards, and silver spoons in a whole row highest up on the cupboard
shelf.
‘Even if it was nice there, I think it was finer at Per’s,’ said
Magnus. ‘Now he was a nice man.’
‘It wasn’t finer,’ put in Anna-Lisa. ‘Think how awful it looked when
we came! The floor was dirty and the fireplace black; it hadn’t been
whitewashed in years; and the window so dirty that you couldn’t see
through it, and the sheets and pillow-case awful, before we washed
them. No, it wasn’t finer. It isn’t finer now when the floor is white
and is covered with carpets, and the fireplace is clean, and the window
clear--I don’t know----’ Anna-Lisa stared puzzled and perplexed before
her.
‘No, I don’t know either,’ mused Andy. ‘The bread we got here was of
better flour and light and fine too. We got food here, and still I’m
kind of mad at them.’
‘And mother, who said we mustn’t be mad, Andy. No, I’m not mad,’
said Maglena. ‘But when I think of them, then I get scared of the
people we’ll meet in the settlements. I’m afraid of people that have
big farms. They have so much, anyway, that a hard year doesn’t hurt
them----’
‘But, anyway, it was better at Per’s.’
The brothers and sisters walked in a group around Andy. They had so
much to talk and think about.
‘And there was no mother at Per’s,’ remarked Magnus.
‘No; for then he could have had it comfortable, anyway, and neat in the
corners,’ concluded Anna-Lisa.
‘If the mother had been like our mother, before she died----’ added
Maglena with a dreamy upward glance.
‘We’ll have to hurry up if we want to get over the river before it
gets dark,’ said Andy, and cast a glance around him.
‘It is beginning to blow from the northeast and that’s never a good
wind.’
‘But how is it with the little ones now?’ Andy stopped the sled, bent
down over the little girls, and tucked the robe about Martha-Greta, who
sat rather uncomfortably in front of Brita-Carrie.
‘Martha-Greta says she wants wings so she can fly like the angels,’
said Brita-Carrie.
‘Ata-Eta ’ants two big wings--and fly up to hennenly Tana, ’way to
hennenly Tana.’ Martha-Greta’s big deep blue eyes looked earnestly out
through the shawl opening.
‘Hear what she says. She wants to fly to heavenly Canaan. Mother is in
heavenly Canaan,’ confirmed Maglena, and pushed the shawl back to kiss
the little sister who was so dear to the hearts of all of them.
‘Here is a bun for you. I saved it just for you.’
Maglena popped the bun, big as it was, into Martha-Greta’s mouth.
‘Maglena! Do you want to choke our baby?’ said Andy, and jumped to the
rescue of the half-choked little one. Then he fed the bun, bit by bit,
into her eager mouth.
‘And here you have a little milk to warm yourselves with. She’s a good
milker, Golden Horn is.’
Anna-Lisa came forward with quite a large wooden bowl full of foaming
warm milk.
‘Go’n Ho’n. Brave Go’n Ho’n!’ came Martha-Greta’s caressing voice from
the shawl.
Go’n Ho’n’ pushed her slender nose through the shawl opening.
And then they were away again with renewed strength. The big farm and
the angry feelings it had awakened had vanished. The road was already
comparatively open. A herd of reindeer had apparently gone by a little
while before and tramped down the snow. The thousands of feet had
opened the road a good distance. A ragged cheese vat of braided roots,
such as the Lapps use when they make cheese of reindeer milk, lay in
the middle of the road.
Maglena picked it up and hung it on the branch of one of the small firs
that marked the road.
‘Come, and let it lie there,’ growled Anna-Lisa.
‘It wasn’t comfortable and the little tree begged me to make it nice,’
laughed Maglena. ‘But now I’m beginning to get tired.’
Her voice showed that she was not as gay as she pretended to be.
‘Stand behind on the runners awhile and rest,’ said Andy. ‘Anna-Lisa
and I can manage with all three of you a good bit. I am afraid there
is snow there in the northwest over the big mountain. But it can’t be
long before we can leave the river and reach the village Pelle told us
about.’
They went quickly forward over the level road which led over the frozen
stream. The little girls were asleep, or at least they were absolutely
quiet. And the others were also quiet. There was something threatening,
something almost awesome in the air.
A blast of wind came with a long wailing cry.
‘Hu, you would think there were wolves after us, the way the wind
howls,’ said Anna-Lisa, and drew the thin cloth closer about her head.
‘But isn’t it easier for you to walk now, anyway, when you have such
good shoes?’ asked Andy with a glance at the shoes, which, though most
certainly clumsy, were new and fine.
‘I should say so! I can jump in them, and they stay on, anyway.’
Anna-Lisa gave a few awkward jumps forward.
It was as if she thereby irritated a flock of snowflakes which lay in
wait for the children, for all of a sudden driving sharp snow enveloped
them. Angrily it forced its way through scarfs and shawls. It threw
itself in masses across the road, which soon lay in uneven waves. If
the little fir trees had not marked the way, the children would soon
have gone astray on the wide river plain.
It became harder to pull the sled through the drifted snow. Andy called
to Maglena that she would have to jump off the runners now.
Maglena obeyed, and soon afterwards came panting forward to the others,
who, with the goat between them, made a close group.
The sled had suddenly become so light.
‘It’s awful how heavy you are. Now it’s as light as nothing,’ said
Anna-Lisa, and jerked the rope toward her. She had an altogether
different temper since she had new shoes and no longer suffered from
blisters.
‘I don’t think it’s easy to get anywhere in this snow,’ muttered
Magnus, who was just then in the middle of a drift.
‘But I go along between the drifts, I do,’ panted Per-Erik. ‘It’s a
little back and forth, but I can’t climb straight through any more.’
‘Do you think it is far to the village?’ whispered Maglena, and slipped
her hand closely into Andy’s.
‘I don’t think so,’ answered Andy, who with wide-open eyes tried to see
through the wildly whirling, lashing snowflakes.
‘We must stop and tuck in the little ones first, so they’ll be warmer,
and then we can go faster afterwards.’
Andy turned toward the sled. He thought it looked queerly empty through
the snowy dusk. In a couple of steps he was beside it. He gave a
shriek, a strange, hoarse cry, such a cry as they had never heard from
Andy, who was always so quiet and self-contained.
‘What in all the world is the matter with you, boy?’ called Anna-Lisa.
‘Martha-Greta! Can’t you see--Brita-Carrie, listen!’ Andy shook
Brita-Carrie, who slept steadily on.
‘Where is Martha-Greta?’
‘I don’t know--she was here all the time.’
‘If you can go on alone, I’ll go back after Martha-Greta,’ said
Andy firmly. ‘Walk just fast enough to keep warm, and keep between
the trees. Yes, you must do as I say,’ repeated Andy bravely, but
thoroughly miserable. But now the group gave a howl of fright,
sorrow, and terror at the thought of being left alone without Andy’s
comfortable protection.
‘You, Anna-Lisa, ought to be able to be quiet, and you, too, who are
men-folk. I must go back and look for Martha-Greta. She probably
tumbled off the sled soon after Maglena had jumped off the runners. If
you had stayed there, you would have seen it. But I had to get lazy, of
course, and not pull so many.’
‘Oh, dear, don’t stand and fuss about it,’ sobbed Maglena. ‘Go and find
our Martha-Greta. We’ll go on like big folks. We have the piece of pork
to eat, and bread too.’
‘Take care of the children, Anna-Lisa.’
‘Look for the cheese-vat wreath on the tree. When I hung that there,
we were all together, and then you needn’t go farther,’ called Maglena
after Andy, who, half-running, with wind and driving snow now on his
back, was away into the drifted snow-field.
CHAPTER VIII
WHERE IS MARTHA-GRETA?
Anna-Lisa quieted and calmed Brita-Carrie with baby talk and a little
warm milk. The little one, now youngest, was tucked in solidly on the
sled. Maglena, for safety’s sake, now walked behind and pushed. She
kept her snow-blinded eyes wide open to watch that this little one
too should not roll off and be lost to them. Andy’s warnings were
not necessary--they plodded slowly and heavily through the drifts,
tired, frightened, hungry. They walked in heavy grief over little
Martha-Greta, who, with her funny talk, her comical little ways, had
been such a joy to them all. They forgot entirely how tiresome she had
been sometimes, too, when she had cried all night, and had needed to be
looked after, dressed, and fed, carried and fussed over in every way.
‘I always thought she was a fairy child’ (destined to die young), said
Anna-Lisa, with tears in her voice.
‘Yes, it flew over me, too, when she said she wanted to go to mother
in heavenly Canaan,’ added Maglena with an old person’s sad, troubled
expression.
‘Well, if only the wolf hasn’t taken her,’ remarked Magnus, with the
wise air of an old man. ‘He is dangerous in the winter. Up in Barren
Bay he’s been away up to the houses.’
‘Oh, please keep still!’ fumed Maglena. ‘Do you want us to go here
thinking that the wolf has torn up little Martha-Greta? If Andy doesn’t
find her, then she flew up herself to “hennenly Tana” and mother has
been here after her, even if we didn’t see it in the snow.’
‘You can’t be so sure of that either,’ objected Per-Erik warily, and
spat in front of him. ‘Bostrom at home scared a bear out of his hole,
and now he’s running around starving, of course. Maybe old Bruin got
her.’
‘Of course,’ Maglena mocked Per-Erik with a whining voice. ‘And all the
way from home here, where it’s nearly the end of the world, he came to
eat up our little Martha-Greta. I suppose the big pig at Sven Paul’s
has come after her too, and the big ram at the school-teacher’s, so he
can gore her to death.’
Maglena burst into tears. ‘You’re so horrid to think of such awful
things when it’s awful enough, anyway, that I--that I get mad. It’s
nicer to think then that mother flew down after little Martha-Greta,
her darling. If she only could, she’d have taken Brita-Carrie and me
with her too.’
‘Don’t begin to talk as if you were a fairy child too.’ Anna-Lisa
interrupted her sister’s angry outburst. ‘I think we’d better not think
anything till we hear what Andy says when he comes after us.’
‘Well, I suppose he’ll never find us,’ muttered Magnus.
But he did. He came climbing through the snow when the group were so
tired, so exhausted that they had strength neither to talk nor to be
‘mad’ at each other. They couldn’t even feel to see if there were any
bits of food left.
If only Anna-Lisa had stopped or sat down to rest in a drift, the whole
company would have followed her example, first of all the little boys,
in their heavy, troublesome clothes. It was Golden Horn, who, most of
all, prevented them from sitting down and going to sleep for always. If
one of the children only turned to the side with that purpose, she ran
off with a loud bleat. And then they had to follow, so afraid were they
of losing her. But they could not follow even her much longer.
Magnus, who long had walked stumblingly, fell forward and snarled
angrily when Anna-Lisa wanted to help him to his feet and start him off
again.
So it was like a miracle when Andy finally came, for with him new life
came into the children again somehow.
_But he came without Martha-Greta!_
He had gone back all the way to the cheese-vat wreath, but had not seen
a trace of their little girl.
‘The wolf takes care of what he gets,’ remarked Magnus with a doubtful
side-glance at Maglena, who, with a bright look upward, was sure
that then she had been right when she said that mother had taken
Martha-Greta up to heavenly Canaan. The wolf would surely leave at
least some rags, she insisted eagerly.
‘Oh, he probably took her away with him with her clothes on,’ said
Magnus stubbornly.
‘What do you think, Andy?’ said Maglena, and crept, trembling with
fear, up to her brother.
‘I don’t know. There was only white snow across the road the whole
way, Maglena. I can’t bear to think that the wolf has taken little
Martha-Greta. It is so awful--as if it were my fault.’
‘You ought to be glad instead, because, you see, mother has taken the
little one up to her.’
Maglena stroked her brother’s cheek with her ice-stiffened mitten.
But it did not comfort him. The tears fell and melted together with the
lashing, driving snow as he walked on, bent forward dragging the sled,
now far too light. He scarcely felt relief when he caught sight of the
road up the bank which led from the river to the solid earth again. And
now, for the first time, Andy noticed that the storm had passed and the
western sky was clearing.
CHAPTER IX
‘HENNENLY TANA’
Forester Kronhjort[7] was on the way home on exactly the same road
over which the children had plodded the last days. He had passed close
to the little gray cottage up in Barren Moor, gone through the Great
Woods, and, like the children, had had to stay over in the first
mountain village because of the storm.
[7] Kronhjort, pronounced Kroonyoort.
You may be sure he had not thought of staying with the Spectacle Man,
not he; he had lived at the inn, and eaten a good breakfast with
cheerful old friends. And so he had started away rather late.
Now he was going down the crooked, troublesome road along the
river-bank where the children had just passed, to reach the river road.
He sat in his little single-horse sleigh in a wolf-skin coat, fur cap,
and fine reindeer-skin boots that reached over his knees. The lashing
snow did not trouble him much, especially since he would soon have the
wind from the side.
The forester intended to cut across and take the direction that only
Skylark, his horse, and he himself knew about: across the river, up
toward the ridge, and to the big church-village[8] where he had his
home.
[8] Church-village is the largest village of the country parish, where
the church of the parish is located.
Just as he was opposite the dwarfed fir which stood farthest out on a
point near the road, and which was his landmark for his own short-cut,
Skylark shied, and with both forelegs jumped carefully over something
which lay right in the middle of the snow-hidden road. Then the horse
stood absolutely still, turned her head, and looked at her master.
The forester jumped lightly out of the sleigh. He bent down under the
horse.
What in the world was this? A child, alone in this desolation, a poor
little one with pale cheeks shining with tears and wrapped in poor
man’s rags.
The forester stood awhile absolutely at a loss, with the child in his
arms. Was it asleep or dead?
No, it lived--it breathed, began to cry--‘Mother. Andy. Go’n Ho’n.
Ita-Tawie.’ The child sobbed, and screamed, and shook with cold.
The young man stood there, stupid and perplexed. He was married and had
a home, but he had absolutely no experience or knowledge of how small
children should be handled, for he had none himself.
Skylark looked as if she understood the affair better. She scraped
in the snow with her front feet, tossed her head, and looked at her
master. What was simpler than to take this little human colt which she
had nearly trampled to death, and rush home with it? There it would
have warmth and care.
As if the forester had understood the horse’s thought, he suddenly
knew what to do. He took the little screamer and thrust her inside his
fur coat. But with rather decided unwillingness, for the forester was
a very refined and neat person, afraid of dirt and rags, most of all
afraid of crying, smutty-nosed youngsters. And this one was both crying
and smutty-nosed in highest degree.
She sat fast now inside the warm coat. Gradually she quieted down,
lulled by the rocking of the sleigh over the unbroken snow, and by the
pretty jingle of the sleighbells that rang out lustily. For no matter
how hard it was to get through the snow, Skylark plodded on with all
her strength. She knew it was important to get home with this poor
little frozen human.
A strange feeling came over the forester, who at first had held the
little one straight up in front of him, fast inside of his belt, like a
stick of wood, when he felt the thin little body tremble with gradually
lessening sobs.
What a happy feeling to be able to comfort and help such a little one!
He pulled her up into an easier position inside the coat.
What could such a poor mite need in the way of food? ‘God help me,’ he
thought. ‘In spite of all I ate and drank this morning, I haven’t so
much as the tiniest bit of bread for such a little one.’
‘You’ll have to hurry, my girl,’ he warned the horse.
Skylark sniffed and lifted her head. Hadn’t she been hurrying against
a wild snowstorm that tore at mane and tail--waded in the snow to the
belly sometimes! But, of course, she could speed up a little more! Yes,
she could break her wind, run until she dropped on the spot too, if her
master wished it! her master, whom she had served for ten years, and
journeyed with in woods and mountains.
The road up through the big forest they now approached was open.
Skylark dashed off so that the very bell-collar rang. Toward twilight
she had reached the big mountain parish that spread out over the wide
valley. Up a steep hill it went. White-stemmed birches marked the way.
They rode through it, turned off to a bright red painted house, with
a balcony and veranda in green and white. Firelight shone through the
windows, and the smoke rose, straight as an arrow, into the air, which
was high and clear with the afterglow of the sunset a rosy red, and
already stars gleamed in the sky.
‘Welcome home again, Arthur,’ called a young woman from the veranda.
She stood still there with a big woolen shawl over her head. The face
which peeped out was delicate and pale, with light hair which curled
about in front of the shawl.
‘Thanks, little woman! Ask Dordi to come and get what I’ve got with me.’
Dordi, the old servant who had taken care of the forester’s wife as a
child, came jovially down the steps. It happened sometimes that the
forester had something especially good in the way of food, or something
else with him, a bear steak, a wolf-skin, or different kinds of birds.
So Dordi was prepared to be loaded down. But she drew back in alarm.
‘Goodness gracious, master! What have we to do with such a thing? Go
in, ma’am, it’s cold.’
But now came a cry from the sleigh, a disconsolate, forlorn baby cry.
The young mistress threw aside the shawl. She ran down the stairs in a
couple of steps, took the crying bundle of rags in her arms and carried
it up. ‘Little mite--poor little mite--what have they done to you?
Hush, hush, now. We’ll soon be where it’s warm and can get some food
into the poor little body.’
Mistress Gerda was not afraid of screaming, dirty-faced youngsters. She
was used to little children from her own childhood home where there had
been a big family of children. To her deep secret sorrow, she herself
had no children. Her wish for a foster-child was not approved by her
husband. He did not want to ‘take the responsibility of other people’s
children,’ and suffered at the very thought of ‘naughty, disobedient,
crying, dirty children.’ Any other kind of child he could not imagine.
And now it was he himself who had brought a child to the house!
Later in the evening, after he had eaten and rested, the forester sat
and watched how his wife quickly and cleverly made big garments into
little ones; how she, in a marvelous way, got together a little dress,
light blue in color, a little apron, little bits of underwear.
She was so eager, his little wife. Her light hair curled down over her
forehead, and the cheeks that were otherwise so pale were a rosy red,
with eagerness and sewing. She looked up at her husband with glowing
eyes.
‘Arthur, we _may_ keep her for the present? You should see her! She’s
lying, all tucked in, in a big clothes-basket out with Dordi.’
‘Till the one she belongs to comes, I suppose she’ll have to stay. We
can’t exactly throw her out on the road. It’s a wonder that none of the
wolves that have been around these days came upon her.’
‘Ugh, and you shot two of those beasts the day before yesterday. Oh,
if only no one owned her! Her name must be Henrietta, for she calls
herself “Ata-Eta.” She is so sweet! And do you know, she folded her
hands when I gave her gruel and bread, and said, “T’ank oo,” and she
talks so funny.’
‘I can imagine what such a half-year-old youngster, or whatever she is,
can say.’
‘She’s more than a half-year old, my dear; why, she has her whole mouth
full of small white teeth, and she walks around so prettily. She must
have a good mother.’
‘I hope so, for the child’s sake, if it ever gets back to her.’
‘Oh, no, Arthur! We can’t let her go! She must have a sister or other
good friend who gives her milk, for when she got milk right after she
came, she called, time after time “Go’n Ho’n.” “Ita-Tawie” she says
often too. I used to be good at guessing baby talk, and my guess is
that she means “little kitty.” To-morrow I’ll try to get a cat for her.
When she was in bed, after we had warmed her poor frozen little feet,
she folded her hands again and sang, do you know, with a really good
voice, such a sweet song.’
‘With words, too?’ asked the forester, a little mockingly, although
he could not help listening with obvious pleasure to his wife’s
description.
‘Words, of course, but I couldn’t make out what they meant. She sang
the same words over and over again, so sweetly with her head on the
side, “Hennenly Tana.”’
‘Oh, “Many, many swans”! That is a song my mother used to sing to me at
bedtime when I was a child, a song about many wild swans. I believe it
was that song that made me love the woods and animals so well that I
became a woodsman.’
‘But it is certainly strange that this poor mite away from the north
and the western famine districts should come here and sing a song
that you, who are a Scanian,[9] fell asleep to when you were small.
And then that you, who never thought of understanding baby talk, now
understand right away what she sings. There must be some meaning in it.’
[9] Scanian, a resident of Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden.
‘Yes, it is strange. I don’t deny that,’ said the forester, quite
flattered at his wife’s appreciation of his ability to understand baby
talk.
‘If no one comes and demands her, she may stay, for me. It will be
hardest for you, who’ll have to take care of her.’
‘For me! Oh, Arthur, after I’ve longed so for a little child!’
The forester drew his wife close.
‘Do you know, so have I sometimes.’
He went out whistling ‘Many, many swans,’ a song he had not sung since
he was a little boy.
CHAPTER X
A DAINTY LITTLE MAID
Eight days later the children came slowly, with tired, dragging feet,
up the steep hill toward the bright red house where the forester lived.
It was a little by-way off the main road, and Andy and Anna-Lisa had
not really been in favor of taking it. Maybe they’d hardly get a piece
of bread in return for the long, tiring walk. With so many famine
people passing through this whole winter, it was easy to understand
that people would get tired of giving.
But Maglena thought that the bright red house up on the hill looked as
though it were painted with red whortleberries and cream, and as if it
laughed and winked at them with the small windows that looked like eyes
up under the roof.
Golden Horn had the same thought as Maglena. She turned abruptly in on
the road up to the wooded hilltop, and almost ran, so that the children
simply had to follow her.
As usual, they became quiet and timid when they approached the house.
The big dog that barked at them did not scare them, however. He looked
more dignified and stately than angry. The children turned their steps
toward the kitchen and left the sled outside. This time they meant to
leave Per-Erik with Golden Horn.
Suddenly, before the children had had time to go in, they saw a lovely
young lady coasting down toward the yard from a short hill a little
higher up. She had a little girl in front of her on the sled. The
little one was dressed in a white kid-skin coat, a little white knitted
cap, and had small shoes on her feet. She laughed and jumped in the
lady’s lap, plainly delighted at coasting. The lady stood up, lifted
her up, and kissed her.
‘You darling little Etta child, now we must go in. The child must eat
and take a nap, and grow to be mother’s fine big girl.’
‘_Go’n Ho’n! Go’n Ho’n! Andy! Ita-Tawie! Alena!_’
The little one wriggled wildly to tear herself away from the arms that
held her so tenderly.
Mistress Gerda turned quickly. She put down the child, who ran eagerly
away from her, dropped her arms, and stood still: a picture of sorrow
and desolation.
The children seemed petrified. They stood absolutely silent, immovable.
But Golden Horn took in the situation at once. She gave a bleat and ran
forward to Martha-Greta. What was it to her that the little one was as
dainty as a princess? Wasn’t it still the same little man-kid that she
used to give milk and warm with her coat?
‘Go’n Ho’n!’
Martha-Greta threw her arms around the goat’s head that was bent down
to her.
She stretched out her arms.
‘Tiss! Nite Andy! Andy tate Ata-Eta!’
And Andy picked up the little sister in his arms. He stroked her
cheeks, her hands. ‘Little girl! Our little baby! Our own dear
Martha-Greta. It’s been so hard without you!’
Martha-Greta held her arms around his neck as though she would never
let him go. But then there were the others who also wanted their share;
little Brita-Carrie and the rest had made a circle around her and
pulled the arms and legs of their restored treasure to get hold of her
and caress her and pet her, they, too.
‘Martha-Greta, nice dear sweet little girl,’ whom they had missed
so deeply. The same little one even though she was dressed in fine
clothes. They did not let her go, but when they came as beggars into
the kitchen they had the little white-clad, well-cared-for youngster
right in their midst.
CHAPTER XI
TWO LITTLE MAIDS
When the Barren Moor children set out again from the forester’s home,
they were only five. Brita-Carrie had been allowed to stay with the
little sister. So the two little maids were together again.
It was the forester himself who had wished it. Orderly person that he
was, he noticed and marveled when the new little ragamuffin who, he
thought, would scarcely know enough to feed herself, came into his room
to thank him for her meal and at once saw his paper-knife under the
table. ‘Is a knife under table,’ she piped, in a sweet voice and crept
down after the object in question.
And sure enough, the paper-knife he prized so highly and had searched
for in vain lay under the deerskin there.
‘Won’t you give it to me?’ he said, and stretched out his hand toward
her.
Brita-Carrie went to him at once and gave him the knife.
The forester, who knew how hard it was to teach dogs to retrieve, was
taken aback. He had thought that it would be harder to get a child to
mind.
‘Ita-Tawie, tom, new doll, sin’ hennenly Tana to new doll.’
Martha-Greta, who was already at home in the forester’s pretty
pleasant rooms, came toddling in and pulled Brita-Carrie with her. She
wanted to show her a new doll, a real one, with clear eyes in a fine
porcelain head, and she wanted them to sing it to sleep as they used to
with other dolls.
The little ones put the doll to bed in a sewing-machine drawer in
the bedroom. In there, with her foster-parents, Martha-Greta now
had her own pretty little bed. Brita-Carrie put her doll too in the
machine-drawer, a stick of wood wrapped up in rags. Then they sang
sweetly and devoutly their song about heavenly Canaan to the two sleepy
dolls, while they rocked the drawer between them.
Gerda, the foster-mother, ran after her husband. He must hear and see
them, see and compare the already rosy-cheeked, happy-eyed little
foundling in neat pretty clothes, with the other, the little paleface
with suffering in her eyes, and in thin worn-out rags. Gerda knew well
why she wanted to give her husband this glimpse of them.
The two stood close to each other, and listened to the children’s song.
‘Arthur, they’re singing about “Heavenly Canaan.” Listen to the new
little one, and it _isn’t_ about “many, many swans,”’ she added shyly.
‘You don’t think you’ve been fooled by the little angel?’
‘No, indeed! I’ll tell you now I absolutely do not want to be without
her. It would be altogether too empty and quiet in the house again.’
‘Arthur, do you remember the proverb that says, “The kettle that cooks
for one, cooks just as well for two”?’
‘You mean--well, God knows----’
The forester looked thoughtfully at the two little ones there on the
floor, who continued to sing and rock the machine-drawer. One of them
he would, and wanted to keep. But the other--the pale little being with
thin cheeks and the dark, suffering eyes--Well, she must go out on the
roads again. And no mother and father owned them, his wife had said.
‘Well, then, _let_ the kettle cook for two,’ he said at last.
The children sang and sang, while the foster-parents, serious, with
bright faces, went out to the older children who sat in the kitchen
and talked with Dordi. They did not want to take the little ones
without the consent of the older ones. And one can well understand
that in a little house, where the very windows smiled and winked up
under the eaves, and where the house itself seemed painted with red
whortleberries and cream, there would be a good place for the little
ones to stay.
CHAPTER XII
EARNINGS AND THE MONEY QUESTION
When the rest of the children went on their way, they were no longer so
unhappy. They had so many wonderful things to talk about. First of all
about the lovely lady with the gentle eyes, and then about the sheets
with lace edgings and about the red quilts in the little girls’ beds,
and about the fine food the little ones would have every day now.
‘And, you know, they have come to really good people, the kind mother
would have liked,’ said Andy earnestly. ‘The lady sat by the bed last
night and heard the little ones’ prayers, and then she said that they
should pray God to protect their brothers and sisters who were homeless
and make them good. I liked that, and that is why I let them stay.’
‘You would have had to let them stay at the big farm if they had
wanted them there, even if the people there were mean and sour,’ said
Anna-Lisa a little sneeringly.
‘Never in all the world!’ said Andy vehemently. ‘Don’t you dare say
that!--there where the master swore so terribly. All sorts of evil can
come to such a house, and the little girls would suffer from that too.’
‘But they had four horses and a gun on the wall, and the master had a
sheath-knife that was real fancy, so the girls would have been well
off in a way,’ thought Magnus.
‘You should see the sheath-knife I got from the forester,’ interrupted
Andy. He showed a knife in a sheath, a knife with a shining black
handle and a leather sheath, a knife with a gleaming sharp edge and a
slender point.
‘Well, I never!’ Magnus stopped in the middle of the road as if turned
to stone. ‘He must have a thousand kronor[10] if he can give away such
a thing. How did it happen that he did that?’
[10] One krona is about twenty-seven cents.
‘I was going to help Dordi cut kindling wood and had only my old knife.
I don’t know whether she said something to the forester, but when I
went in to thank him for all of us, he gave me the knife. And then he
said that a good Swede who knows how to use a knife right can always
get along and live with honor.’
‘It sounds beautiful, such talk,’ said Maglena dreamily.
‘The lady there was so awfully good too, she gave me such nice yarn.
Look here----’
Maglena took out a paper bag from the shawl which was bound about her
waist. They stood still now, for they were in a grove of trees and away
from the eyes of people. She sat down on the sled.
‘Look here--red yarn for roses and green for leaves and brown for
stalks.’
‘But where--where in all the world are they going to be?’ asked
Anna-Lisa, looking just as surprised as all the others, who gazed in
the greatest astonishment at Maglena’s splendor. It included even a
bone crochet hook, and a set of knitting needles stuck through a ball
of gray yarn, in which sat also a shining darning needle.
‘This is what she said to me, that nice lady: “Can you knit?” said she.’
‘Good gracious! I should hope so,’ sniffed Anna-Lisa.
‘Yes, and I said so, so there! You might let me finish! “Yes,” said I.’
‘“Look here,” said she.’
‘What did you see then?’ asked Per-Erik, deeply interested, letting his
hand slide over the yarn as if he wished to caress it.
‘Honestly, you ask and fuss until I eat up what I was going to say and
can’t remember it.’
‘You were going to see something,’ Andy helped her.
‘So I was, but be quiet now. She showed me a pair of mittens, such nice
mittens that you’ve never seen the like.’
‘They cost a lot of money, of course,’ said Magnus thoughtfully.
‘Yes, they did, but not for those who made them--then it costs only the
yarn.’
‘The yarn, yes, but that doesn’t cost so little either,’ mused
Anna-Lisa.
‘You’re all so awfully bothersome, the way you hunt up troubles, that
I hardly want to finish,’ grumbled Maglena. But she graciously took out
a half-finished mitten, to which the white worsted still clung.
It was crocheted, the way the women in Norrland used to crochet fine
warm mittens with a little bone crochet hook. And on that half were
sewed, with yarn, red roses, green leaves, and brown stalks.
‘Do you suppose you can guess now where the roses and leaves will be?’
Maglena let the little half-mitten pass between her brothers and sister.
‘Yes, but who is going to make them? You certainly can’t do anything
so fine and so pretty,’ said Magnus superiorly, and with crushing
conviction.
‘No, of course not,’ answered Maglena saucily. ‘I suppose you think you
could do it better--you who darn stockings as if you were tying up a
sack of flour, just pulling the hole together, no matter how big it is.’
‘Careful, Maglena, don’t be saucy,’ warned Andy. ‘It’s never nice when
women-folk are like that.’
‘Well, then he can keep quiet when he doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘It’s because he doesn’t know that he asks,’ continued Andy patiently.
‘I don’t know either how you are going to make such roses or when
you’ll have time for such things.’
‘Yes, but I know. When you were out yesterday and carried in wood for
them and shoveled snow, I was with the lady and she helped me mend my
jacket. And she let me sew this apron for myself.’
‘She let me sew one for me too,’ said Anna-Lisa proudly.
‘And when that was finished, she showed me how to crochet. Look here,
now. But it is awfully hard, of course.’
With stiff, frost-reddened fingers, her mouth solemnly pinched
together, Maglena showed what the others considered her marvelous
ability to crochet.
‘And now comes the most wonderful.’
Importantly she threaded a tapestry needle with red yarn.
‘Then, you see--comes the really strange thing--that I can--sew--so
beautifully.’
She sewed only a couple of stitches, but it aroused noticeable respect
among the rest.
Suddenly she jumped up, tucked away the yarn, and beat the air wildly
with her arms, for the place in the snow in zero weather was not the
best for a sewing school.
‘After that, you see, I’ll knit mittens and sew roses on them
and--_sell_ them, you see--and get money--and I’ll buy us a little
house that looks like raspberries and cream and has windows that laugh
up under the roof. The little girls and all of us will make mittens.
_Swedish_ mittens--’cause the lady said that anything we do we should
remember that Sweden’s name goes with it, and you must do everything
you do so that you don’t shame your country, of course. As soon as
spring comes, I’ll begin to knit while I walk. She said that women used
to do that. I’ll knit stockings in the daytime, and in the evening,
while we sit in some birch wood, I’ll crochet and sew roses that will
be just as pretty as real briar-roses.’
‘Not that I’m going to start knitting mittens,’ said Magnus, as
he straightened up and tucked in the overflow of long, dragging
coat-sleeves at the wrists. ‘No, for my part, I am going to America
and dig up so much gold that I can buy the whole Barren Moor parish
and the church too, if I want to, and fill it with berries and cheese,
raspberries and pork, and----’
Magnus flew to the side of the road. Shrieking and frightened he put
his hand to his cheek. A box on the ear burned there. Andy, who had
never punished the children while mother lived, and who had a marvelous
patience with them, became suddenly furiously angry.
Magnus got a box on the ear, and Andy now continued to shake him as if
he had been a sack of potatoes in which one needed more room.
‘Boy, aren’t you ashamed? Are you going to care more for a foreign land
than for our own? “Go after gold”--like our uncle who was lost there?
And, besides, that you should take that gold to buy the church, just so
you could buy the beautiful church where they preach about God, for a
storehouse? That’s making light of great things, Magnus, and I won’t
stand such talk.’
The children walked quietly, considerably impressed by Andy’s
unexpected outburst of anger, Magnus sulking and bellowing by turns.
‘It is better for a man to make mittens with honor than to take up
sacksful of gold and use it for what is wrong--remember that, Magnus,’
continued Andy, still panting with indignation. He climbed through the
drifts into the forest of low trees, and with the sharp knife cut off
the top of a tree, on which the little branches sat so closely together
as to make a good kitchen whisk. He was trying to be good again.
‘Now that the little girls don’t sit on the sled any longer,’ said
he, ‘I thought I could carry stuff on it to work on in the evenings,
when we come to some farm where there is fire on the hearth or in the
laundry or in the farmhands’ room.’
‘Do you intend to make kitchen whisks and brooms?’ asked Anna-Lisa with
a certain respect in her voice for the brave brother.
‘I’ve thought about it. Wooden spoons too. Grandfather at Sven Paul’s
was good at making wooden spoons, but I never had a knife to try too.’
‘And I’ll paint them for you,’ called Maglena to Andy in the grove.
‘Such pretty little blue roses and daisies. I’ll make paint the way
mother did, out of leaves and flowers and roots.’
‘May I help you make spoons when I get big?’ mumbled Magnus when he
came near Andy out in the road.
‘That you shall, boy. Here, you can have my old knife, and then you can
begin to get stuff together now, even if you are small.’
‘We can sell the spoons, too, Andy, and get money. But I won’t buy the
church, because then the minister can’t read there.’
‘No, and we can’t sit there and listen, and sing and read, so that we
get to be good people as mother wanted us to be.’
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE PLACE OF THE DEAD
When the children, a few days later, had emerged from the poorest of
the mountain districts, they came one evening to a farm where sickness
and sorrow reigned. It was a big rich farmstead. The eldest girl had
just died, only ten years old. And now the little boy, the only son,
seven years old, lay sick with the same disease of which the sister had
died. The wife, a stately, beautiful woman, stood over the fire and
whipped barley-meal into the boiling water, when the little group of
children with, as usual, shy, timid faces, came in.
She had a stern husband, and had to do her work well and as usual, even
though sorrow filled her heart and anxiety over the little one who,
too, might be taken from her, tortured her.
She turned toward the door when it remained open so long in order to
let in all the five children.
To-day they pushed Anna-Lisa ahead of them. It was always so hard for
those who were poorly clad to come into such a big fine house, and ask
for food and sleeping room.
The wife stared at Anna-Lisa.
‘Come up to the fire, child,’ she said with a sad, gentle voice. She
put out her hand to greet Anna-Lisa, who was much impressed. It wasn’t
usual to be greeted like that when one was one of the famine people.
‘What may your name be, girl?’ asked the wife, and pushed back the
scarf from Anna-Lisa’s light hair.
‘Anna-Lisa,’ she answered, and looked up into the mistress’s sad eyes
with her honest blue ones.
‘No, that can’t be possible! “Anna-Lisa,” like our Anna-Lisa, whom the
Lord took away!’
The wife put both hands to her head, and sank down on the hearth bench.
She had already removed the gruel kettle from the fire.
‘Yes, it is true,’ assured Andy, and stepped forward. ‘Her name is
Anna-Lisa, like our grandmother, who is dead.’
The husband came in, followed by the two farmhands. They were covered
with snow, although out on the step, they had stamped off the worst of
what had covered them in the woods where they had been driving timber.
Though he was still a young man, he walked with bent head.
‘How is our little chap?’ he asked his wife as he passed her.
‘Same as the girl. The Lord will probably take him too.’
The master went silently to the table, sat down, and said grace. He
took a wooden spoon and ate out of the same dish as the men, though
each one had his own wooden bowl of milk. There were also goat’s-milk
cheese, bread, and butter on the table.
‘Has Mother Gullen gone?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘She left before noon, but then she couldn’t do anything more for
little Karl. Even if we drove the ninety miles to the doctor’s, it
wouldn’t help any. He’s half-unconscious now--we’ll soon be childless.’
The man ate spoonful after spoonful, but it was plain that sorrow
filled him, as well as his wife, who, outwardly calm, stood by the
table and cut up rye bread for the woodsmen, who also looked depressed.
‘But there’s no scarcity of little people, otherwise, I see,’ said the
master bitterly. ‘When one can’t keep and feed one’s own, it’s best to
send other people’s children away.’
‘That would be a sin, it seems to me,’ said the wife patiently. ‘If
we’ll soon be without children, these poor things, I hear, are without
parents. I think that is just as hard.’
It was perfectly quiet in the big kitchen, which the fire lighted up
brightly. The copper kettles over the door shone in a long rich-man’s
row. The built-in beds were provided with red striped curtains. The
tall Dalecarlian clock was quite gorgeous, painted blue with red roses.
There were neat rag carpets on the white scrubbed floor. And inside
the shining window-panes, with their airy hand-woven curtains, were
seen flowers, myrtles, balsamines, snap-dragons, fuchsias. So it was
an unusually pleasant room, which was not put to shame by the three
spinning-wheels, pushed to one side for the moment.
‘Go and greet father, Anna-Lisa,’ said the wife, and pushed the girl
toward the master with a sad, meaningful smile.
Anna-Lisa reddened painfully when she went forward alone. She looked
gentle and sweet at this moment, pleasant, neat, and combed, though her
clothes were poor and worn.
The master looked up surprised.
‘What in the world is _your_ name, girl?’
‘Anna-Lisa.’ She looked timidly and anxiously over at her sister and
brothers.
The master put his hands to his head as if confused, just as his wife
had done.
‘Heavens, Brita Dea, she looks just exactly like our Anna-Lisa before
she was sick!’
‘I thought, too, when I saw her here, that our Anna-Lisa went away so
that this one should come in her stead.’
The wife looked steadily and earnestly at her husband. She took
Anna-Lisa’s hand, and put her arm slowly, almost caressingly, around
the girl’s neck, while she led her back to the rest beside the fire.
When the men, after thanking God for food, left the table, she set it
for the children. Milk and mush, and, what wasn’t often their lot,
sandwiches of the fine, and at that time highly prized, rye bread.
Then she went quickly and quietly away. The children understood that
she went to see the sick boy.
They sat around the table, restless and thoughtful. The talk about
Anna-Lisa’s staying worried them.
The wife came out of the little room off the kitchen, where the sick
child lay. She went swiftly through the kitchen and out.
‘Maybe he is dead,’ whispered Anna-Lisa. ‘Then they’ll be angry with
the Lord, and will chase us away.’
‘No,’ objected Maglena. ‘Didn’t you see that her eyes were shining?
More likely the boy is better, and then they will be glad and want to
thank the Lord, and then they’ll take you, Anna-Lisa.’
Again the children sat in depressed spirits.
Suddenly Anna-Lisa put her head down on her hands which were folded on
the table. She wept--wept, though so quietly that no one could hear it.
But her shoulders shook, and the hopeless position of her head betrayed
her.
The children munched their fine sandwiches in anxious silence.
‘Please, Anna-Lisa, please,’ said Andy, and tried to draw her hands
away. It seemed to him so hard, so unusual, to see Anna-Lisa, who was
generally so quiet and calm, weeping so helplessly.
Anna-Lisa raised her face, red with weeping.
‘I don’t want to be without you--first the little girls, I miss them
awfully--and then all of you.’
‘Well, it will be hard for us too,’ said Andy gently. ‘You’ve been so
good to the little ones, and to all of us, for that matter.’
‘And who will milk Golden Horn--and mend for the boys--and wash and
keep you in order?’ sniffed Anna-Lisa. She looked at the two smallest
at the table with a troubled, motherly eye. ‘You don’t wash or comb
yourselves if I don’t keep after you.’
Magnus and Per-Erik lowered their eyes guiltily. Brave men as they
wanted to be, they thought it terribly bothersome, all this combing and
washing. It wasn’t any fun either on Saturday nights to have to pull
off the shirt which wrapped around their bodies so warmly, and then
struggle to get their arms into another which would be icy cold, yes,
even wet, thought the boys, since it had lain in the knapsack where
snow and the cold wind had got into it. And no shirt ever really fitted
them either. The shirt, as well as other garments, came always as a
surprise to them--sometimes it was so big it hung down and dragged.
Another time it was so small and tight that your nose got squeezed when
the change took place.
Anna-Lisa used to rub their necks and ears and eyes with soft soap and
water, and wipe them with old clothes that were washed but not mangled,
of course, and so hard that ‘they scratched like wolves’ claws,’
insisted the little men when they rose in opposition.
They sat at the table truly alarmed lest Anna-Lisa should stay here;
though they didn’t have the same worries that she did about the coming
lack of neatness and order. The only thing that would comfort them in
her absence was just the suddenly flaming hope that without her they
should go free of water, soft soap, and towels.
‘You’d be well off here, Anna-Lisa,’ said Andy with an attempt at
cheerfulness in his voice. ‘You’ll have a real bed to sleep in and this
kind of food all the time.’
‘And you’ll all be on the roads, and I’ll be thinking that you are
sleeping in some cold shed where you’ll get vermin from other famine
people, and that you never have enough to eat.’
‘We’ve had that too sometimes. Don’t you remember the big farm where
they had such a lot of children, anyway, and we got a whole kettleful
of pea soup? They cooked it just especially for the wandering people.’
‘Yes, and I’ll probably stand here and cook for such people too,’
continued Anna-Lisa complainingly, ‘and think that you are hungry and
do not know a single day in advance where you are going to get a bed
for the night.’
‘Oh, but that isn’t so bad,’ Maglena’s soft voice chimed in. ‘We’ve
never had to sleep outside, and pretty soon it is going to be so light
all night that we can sleep out on the ground with the flowers.’
‘And then I’ll be lying in a bed,’ said Anna-Lisa with the same
complaining voice.
But at the same time she smiled a little shame-facedly. And with that a
bright feeling of relief went through the rest.
‘It is awful how hard it is to be satisfied,’ said Andy contemplatively.
‘I’ve gone all this time and thought how nice it would be if we all
came to really fine good people--that mother would like--and now----’
Andy became quiet; it was evident that he found it hard to think of
possibly leaving the thoughtful, capable sister behind them.
‘You must go with us, wherever we go, Anna-Lisa,’ murmured Maglena with
the last bit of bread in her mouth. She wiped nose and fingers on the
mended, washed-out apron, and rubbed her head against Anna-Lisa’s cheek.
‘You see, it’s always fun to be outside--even if it isn’t so
comfortable, you always see so much. The snow gets into such queer
shapes on everything. And it’s fun to see the tracks in the snow when
it is smooth on the marshes and fields. There are long ripples in it,
just like lace. Rabbits and foxes and dogs and magpies and crows all
mark the snow with their feet in different ways, so it is nice enough
for a wedding.’
‘I don’t see anything like that. I see only you,’ murmured Anna-Lisa
sorrowfully.
‘Yes, you must come with us again, Anna-Lisa, do you hear? Now
it will soon be spring and the big streams open up and they sing
so beautifully. We have Golden Horn with us, so we’ll have milk
to drink--and marsh berries on the marshes and blueberries and
strawberries, as much as we can eat.’
‘Yes, if we’ve been out and had a hard time this winter, I guess we can
get along in the summer too,’ said Magnus decidedly.
‘Girl, I think you ought to go with us,’ asserted Per-Erik. The words
cost him a certain amount of self-conquest, for the threatening danger
of washing and combing stood always before him.
‘Be quiet,’ warned Anna-Lisa, and raised her head to listen. ‘There was
a voice in the little room; the boy is alive; maybe he wants some one.’
She tiptoed across the room and paused perplexed at the door.
‘Come here--I don’t want to be alone,’ she heard a thin weak voice call.
‘Is it you, Anna-Lisa?’ said the little patient on the sofa. ‘Sing,
“Wherever I go” to me--then I’ll go to sleep.’
The boy turned his face, now damp with perspiration after a sudden turn
for the better, to the wall, closed his eyes, and waited for the song.
Anna-Lisa knew the song well, but it went against her to sing alone,
and in a strange place.
‘Sing, do you hear?’ called the boy in an invalid’s impatient voice.
Anna-Lisa sang softly:
‘Wherever I go, in forests, hills, and valleys,
A Friend follows me,
I hear His voice.’
While she sang, she stroked and cooled the boy’s forehead with a linen
rag which she moistened in the water in a porcelain mug that stood on a
chair by the bed.
The wife came in with her husband. It was he that she had gone to find
and bring with her. He too should see the miracle that had happened to
the boy, their only child.
The man was so moved when he saw the child, who, red with fever, had
recently been throwing himself about in pain, now lying in quiet,
healthy sleep, that he involuntarily clasped his hands in thanks and
praise to a helping God.
Anna-Lisa interrupted her song and stood up to leave the room.
The man took her arm.
‘You shall stay with us, girl, for as happy as I am now I’ve never been
in all my life.’
Anna-Lisa drew slowly away from him. Unhappy and frightened, she
glanced at the door. It seemed as if all the world’s treasure that she
was about to lose were on the other side of it.
‘Aren’t you glad to get away from need and trouble, and have a home
and protection here all your days now, when I’ve thought you should
stay here for always?’ asked the young master, surprised and almost
displeased when he saw the girl’s anxious expression.
‘Yes,’ answered the girl in a low voice. ‘Only it is so hard to think
of the little boys. I am the one that has washed them and combed them,
and milked Golden Horn so that they had sweet milk every day. The
smallest one is not so old as this boy, and he must be on the roads
while I am comfortable.’
CHAPTER XIV
PER-ERIK AND ANNA-LISA
Anna-Lisa’s big blue eyes filled with tears. She went out to her
brothers and sister. The master followed her. He glanced keenly at the
little boys.
‘So this is the little one you worry most about? My goodness, such a
little fellow to have walked all the way from Barren Moor!’
‘I’m not so little. I’m going on six since Candlemas.’
Per-Erik answered the young man’s glance hastily. He scraped the dish
once more, and licked off the wooden spoon systematically and with
emphasis.
The master smiled a bit.
‘Maybe they wouldn’t want to let you go, eh?’
Per-Erik stared with big eyes toward the fire.
‘I don’t know what to say. I suppose it would be hard for them not to
have any one to worry over, and keep after, now that the little girls
were left at the forester’s.’
The wife came in. She stood and listened to the boy’s chatter with
a brighter, happier expression than any she had had since her only
daughter’s death.
‘Then you can’t get on without him?’ wondered the master with a little
special, meaning look at Andy.
Andy met his glance soberly.
‘It isn’t worth talking about that until such a thing comes into
question.’
‘There is good, real stuff in these children,’ said Mistress Brita Dea.
‘I believe they bring what is good and blessed to the house.’
‘Maybe we could let this brave little fellow stay here too for a
while,’ said the farmer doubtfully. He scratched himself thoughtfully
behind the ear.
‘Little Karl will probably get well quicker if he has a playmate,’ said
Brita Dea.
Andy became eager too. If Anna-Lisa was to be taken away from them,
it would be still harder to take care of the little ones in all the
strange, often unpleasant, conditions they came upon.
There were so many bad examples; so much evil would meet the boy’s
eyes, so much light-minded chatter, scolding, and quarreling and coarse
swearing would reach his ears when one went thus from house to house.
‘It would be awfully nice if Per-Erik could stay at such a place, so
he could grow to be a fine man,’ said Andy. His deep dark eyes looked
earnestly up at the big strong farmer who stood in front of him.
‘When I get a little older, I’m going to get work as a goatherd, or
chore-boy, where I can learn something, and then I’ll come back and
get Per-Erik, if he may stay until then.’
‘So he may. I can’t bear to think of our little Karl being sent away
and walking the roads the way this little one would be doing. There
is real courage in you too, boy. And I believe you’ll do what you say
you’ll do, so you can come some day and take the little one again if
you keep your health.’
The wife, greatly pleased, put out her hand to Andy with a warm, strong
pressure.
‘Make a bed for the boy in the north upper bed,’ said the man. ‘He
seems to be clean and neat, even if he does come from the highways.’
Yes, Per-Erik well knew that he was ‘clean and neat.’ It was only
Monday now, and the memory of the last Saturday bath, this time
followed by a tight, nose-squeezing shirt, was still all too fresh in
his mind.
‘Anna-Lisa may lie there too,’ said Brita Dea. Her face shone with
happiness, and she talked with the children as if they were old friends.
The maid, who came in with the evening milk foaming in a big blue
painted firkin, stopped at the door as if petrified. When she went out
to feed and milk the cows, it had been quiet in the house: quiet as
when death has taken and stands threatening to take still more. And
now--happy, babbling child voices, the clatter of spoons and dishes
being washed. In front of the fire a little maid with curly hair who
was sewing red roses on a mitten. A boy, who was cutting kindling wood
and sweeping the hearth, after putting more wood on the fire. Mistress
Brita Dea herself at the spinning-wheel again.
‘Dear me, how cheerful this is!’ said Stina. She opened the door of
a big cupboard, where clean empty milk-bowls were ranged in racks,
one above the other. Then she put a sieve over each bowl in turn, and
poured in the warm milk with a dipper.
The big cat that sat and stared from the bench by the cupboard was also
given some in his saucer near the water-barrel at the door.
Stina helped herself to butter, bread, and cold mush from the
sideboard. Then she too pulled out a spinning-wheel, and worked so that
the wheel looked like a cloud, while the linen thread, fine as silk,
increased on the spool.
‘Take these boys to the stable-room,’ said the mistress at last. ‘See
that they have pillow-cases and a decent sheepskin cover. The girls and
Per-Erik are to be here in the upper bed. Will you see if little Karl
is sleeping well first?’
The mistress and Stina went in to the little room on tiptoe.
Stina looked unutterably pleased when she came out. She went up to
Anna-Lisa and took her hand.
‘Welcome to us, girl--and you too, little fellow. We’ll be good
friends, I feel sure.’
CHAPTER XV
GHOSTS ON THE ICE
‘Ugh, it’s just exactly as if we were all alone in the whole world,’
said Maglena, and drew closer about her the little home-woven shawl she
had been given by Mistress Brita Dea.
‘That’s true enough, but it won’t be so hard to go into a house now
when we aren’t so many,’ comforted Andy.
‘When I stay out with Golden Horn, where there isn’t any place to tie
her, you’ll be just two, and that can’t be anything to fuss over.’
‘Anything,’ repeated Maglena. ‘I always remember the little girls and
Martha-Greta when she said “nennenin” for “anything.” She put her
little head on the side and rolled up her eyes and pretended to be so
miserable.’
‘And she was too, many times, when she was cold, poor thing, and was
hungry and wanted mother,’ said Andy thoughtfully. ‘Mother must be
satisfied now, the way the little ones are taken care of,’ he added.
‘And I’m sure she is. Maybe she came to earth and talked to the people
so the forester and Karl Nilsson took the children.’
‘Yes, they’re well off all right. They wouldn’t think it was any fun
to walk here on the ice with their feet slipping in all directions so
that they nearly split in two,’ said Magnus grimly.
To tell the truth, he missed Per-Erik appallingly, even though he
thought he could get along without Anna-Lisa. But his own feeling of
loss was not unmixed with a feeling of a little sympathy also for the
brother, who now, alone and defenseless, was the one on whom Anna-Lisa
would descend with soap and water. Magnus had sympathetically pointed
out this side of the matter to Per-Erik, who, however, with something
of courage and hope in his voice, had been sure that it really wouldn’t
be quite so bad. Little Karl was getting better, assured Per-Erik, ‘and
you may be sure that, even if he is a rich farmer’s son, he must be
both combed and washed. And especially now when there is some one like
Anna-Lisa in the house.’
But although he thought about how helplessly exposed he, Per-Erik, was
to such things, Magnus wished that evening that he were back with him
in the light pleasant farmhouse.
That would be other than walking over ice that shone black, and
glittered as if one were on open water, and have northern lights
overhead besides, threatening and alarming with red and yellow and blue
flames high up in the heavens. One could really believe that it was the
Day of Judgment and that everything, both earth and moon and stars, was
about to burn up. For just so sparkled and shone and flew the flames up
there in the northern sky. And in spite of that the moon sat there in
his place and laughed with his whole face, without knowing the danger
that surrounded him.
Magnus could just as well have ridden on the sled, which glided lightly
as a mere nothing over the ice, and then he wouldn’t have needed to
suffer all this slipping and sliding in all directions. Both Andy and
Maglena had advised him to. But Magnus said that he was man enough to
walk.
The truth was that the owls had begun to hoot weirdly in the Black
Mountain that formed a wall along the lake, and then those unpleasant
northern lights were so frightening. Magnus thought that on the sled he
was altogether too far away from people, that is to say, from the older
brother and sister.
Andy and Maglena led Golden Horn between them. They supported her at
the same time, for it was no doubt just as hard for her as for Magnus
to stand on the slippery ice.
‘We must pull her,’ said Maglena. ‘Poor little girl, you slip in all
directions and will soon be all worn out. Sit on the sled, Magnus, and
hold on to her. She can stand there just as well as not.’
‘She’ll stand there, anyway. It’s kind of more comfortable for me to
walk,’ assured Magnus, and at the same time he slipped with one foot
and sat down hard on the ice.
He was angry, for it was at least the eleventh time he had sat down
since he had come out on the ice, and he was frightened.
While he still sits there and whiningly rubs the part that gets the
first bump when one sits down on ice, he sees something that makes the
hair rise on his round head. He wasn’t very brave at heart before, of
course. Yes, something comes running toward the children across the
ice, something that flies as fast as the east wind which blows across
the lake. It shrieks and snarls and spits. And it looks as if a little
spiral of smoke stands right up from that thing that comes running.
Magnus was on his feet again, and that in a hurry.
‘Oh, good gracious! Boy! Girl! Do you see?--I think it is a ghost
coming to take us.’
Andy and Maglena started back with fright. They as well as Magnus would
have liked to take to their heels. But it was absolutely impossible to
get away from the rapidly approaching monster over the slippery ice.
‘What in all the world is it?’ whispered Andy, staring with wide-open
eyes at the dark animal which with two fiery eye-sockets, or whatever
it was, seemed intending to fly at them.
Maglena had tight hold of Andy’s hand. Magnus, the little ‘man,’ forgot
his manly dignity entirely. He shrieked and clung tightly to Andy with
both arms and legs.
‘I’ve never in my life seen anything so awful!’ screamed Maglena.
‘Why, it’s a cat, and she can’t walk!’ Maglena took the monster,
which really proved to be a cat, up into her arms without paying any
attention to the way she snarled and spit; she herself trembled with
fright and sympathy.
‘She has such queer feet,’ she added unhappily. ‘Andy, can you
understand what is the matter with them?’
Andy looked closely at the cat’s feet. ‘It is--it--what in all the
world! It’s pig’s feet that they’ve stuck the cat’s feet into! That’s
why she couldn’t take care of herself, but had to go along with the
east wind on the ice.’
Tears sprang to Maglena’s eyes. She pulled and jerked at the
instruments of torture that squeezed the cat’s feet.
‘Kitty, poor, poor kitty! People have done this, ’cause see how hard
they’re bound with sharp strings.’
It was as if Maglena saw proof in these strings that it was people who
had committed the crime, and as if otherwise the cat herself would have
put on the pig’s feet as rubbers.
‘Well, if people have done it, then they are not people, but something
worse than everything mean,’ said Andy. His eyes flashed in the
moonlight and his hands doubled up as if he wanted to beat the people
who had done this.
‘It was the tail that stuck straight up that I thought was smoke,’ said
Magnus, who, standing by himself at a safe distance from the cat’s
claws, now looked her over carefully. ‘I was nearly scared that time,
and then it was only a cat!’ He sniffed disdainfully.
‘Only a cat!’ said Maglena, full of resentment. ‘I wish that the one
who did this sat with his feet tied, and frightened and hungry and
cold.’
‘Yes, and had those bad northern lights over him, and the owls that
hoot in the mountains, and a score of wolves that howl around him,’
interrupted Magnus in order to make the punishment really severe.
‘Yes, that too; and the one who did this should have to go on alone in
the night in front of the east wind and not be able to stop,’ went on
Maglena.
She still wept, rocked, and caressed the cat as she sat on the sled
with her in her arms.
‘I didn’t think there were such cruel people in the world,’ said Andy
gloomily.
‘They could never have done such a thing at home at Barren Moor.’
‘I should think not! Any one who did that would be disgraced forever,’
concluded Maglena sternly.
‘But now you must have food, poor kitty. You are as thin and dry as a
knife-blade.’
If Maglena’s simile was not exactly sound, there was at least that much
truth in it that the cat looked wretched and rough--for she hadn’t been
able to lick and clean herself as cats like to do to keep themselves
nice; wet--for she had been in the water; and with bleeding feet.
‘There, Andy, take her while I milk a drop for her.’
Andy took the cat and held her faithfully, if not also with the same
overflowing tenderness that Maglena showed in her treatment of the
unhappy tortured animal.
The cat had stopped spitting and snarling, and now lapped up the warm
milk from a little wooden bowl. Then she began to clean and lick her
bruised and sore paws, and wash her face with the inside of her front
paws which she first wet with her tongue. Then she crept up into
Maglena’s lap, mewing gently and gratefully. They were at once good
friends, the sure friendship between rescued and rescuer.
The robe on the sled was arranged to best advantage. Magnus was ordered
there again, and now he could sit there, of course, ‘so that the cat
shouldn’t run away from them.’
With Maglena near by, who, with the same idea, walked close behind him
and pushed the sled, all his manly dignity, which had so obviously
disappeared for a while, came back.
CHAPTER XVI
IN A DEN OF THIEVES
Magnus slept as he sat on the sled and rested his tired, strained bones
and sinews. Kitty slept and rested deathly frightened nerves, and limbs
twisted almost out of joint. Owls hooted and shrieked shrilly koo-hu-u,
and kle-vitt in the mountains that were reflected in the ice so that it
looked coal black near the shore.
But out on the lake the ice gleamed red, yellow, green, as the
northern-light flames over the heavens were reflected on its shining
surface.
Andy and Maglena, not to mention little Magnus, would have thought it
both dismal and creepy to be out alone on such a night if they had not
been cheered up over saving the cat.
As they now walked and talked and led Golden Horn between them, they
reached the last fir on the lake. It, like the other guiding firs, had
lost a solid foothold in the last thaw, and now leaned sadly to one
side.
They had a more sure foothold on land on a driven road. Golden Horn
dived like lightning into the thicket to get a meal of pine branches
and willow buds.
Kitty didn’t want to stay any longer either, but was ready at once to
take to her feet. Maglena caught her. She stuffed her into her shawl
and held her fast with both hands.
Andy alone drew the sled with Magnus, who still slept heavily. He bent
his steps toward the first big farmhouse he caught sight of. Light
shone from all the windows of a red painted two-story house a bit back
from the road. They understood that there was either a funeral or a
wedding going on there. So it was not for such wandering people to go
to such a place. Therefore, they approached the first-named house, also
a big two-story house, but this one was gray and unpainted. Not really
finished either, old as it was, for boards were still nailed across
some of the windows instead of glass.
The fence that surrounded the place was ragged for long stretches,
and the gate hung by one hinge on the gatepost. The gate had not, as
is generally done in the fall, been carried in to protect it from the
heavy snow. Trash and rubbish and broken bottles lay everywhere and
glittered in the moonlight.
Kitty fought and struggled in Maglena’s shawl as if she had suddenly
gone wild. She clawed and snarled, no matter how Maglena tried to calm
her.
The door to the right in the hallway leading into the house creaked.
Now there was no holding the cat. With one twist, she tore herself
loose and flew like a shot away from Maglena out into the yard.
A boy about Andy’s size came slouching out on the step, followed by a
gray dog.
The gray dog barked and growled at them with drawn-up nose and angrily
gleaming teeth.
Magnus woke up and gave a shriek. Golden Horn fled behind Andy.
But Maglena did as she used to when she, in so strange a way, succeeded
in calming and taming animals.
She sat down on the ground and opened her arms to the dog without
minding how he bit at her and tore away part of the shawl fringes.
‘So-o-o, so-o! You don’t want to do us any harm, we who are small and
alone.’
The dog quieted down, but growled with arched back. He looked dangerous
when he, with sly glances and stealthy steps, went around the children
and sniffed after the goat, who had crept in between them.
‘Boy,’ called Maglena with her pretty, ringing, soft, but at the same
time decided, voice. ‘Boy, call your dog. You can see that we are small
and alone. You are big, and ought to help us,’ she added when the boy
only whistled and did not seem to listen to what she said.
‘Call your dog at once!’ Maglena’s voice became commanding. The dog was
impressed by it. He stood still as if ashamed.
The boy came down the step, kicked loose a piece of ice, and threw
it into the group. It struck the dog, who whined and with a look of
hatred and fear at Grels, the boy, the farm’s oldest son, lumbered out
through the gateway.
Grels followed the dog out through the gate, but leered slyly back. He
saw how the children went to the woodshed with the goat creature they
had with them.
Yes, there she was safe, the goat!
All three children went to the shed with Golden Horn whom they tied
lightly near a pile of chips. There she could lie down until they,
as usual, could get her into the barn. Generally only one of them
attended to Golden Horn. But to-day it seemed that they did not dare be
separated a single moment.
They held each other’s hands tightly when they went up the steps into
the hallway and opened the door into the big room or kitchen where
light streamed out through the windows.
Yes, no doubt the room was big and fine. It could have looked exactly
like the big kitchen at Karl Nilsson’s. Here, too, there was an
over-bed, a rosy Dalecarlian clock, and blue painted cupboards. But
it was slovenly, untidy. No curtains at the windows and no hangings
in front of the beds. On the table were seen wooden bowls and wooden
spoons left since the evening meal.
A well-grown, pretty, but carelessly dressed servant girl stood with
one foot on a bench, and scraped the mush kettle out of which she was
eating.
‘Make a move, there, grandfather,’ she screamed angrily at an old man
who, tremblingly and clumsily, sat whittling kindling wood.
‘You’ve been up long enough. You’ve had all you’re going to get. Get
out now!’ snapped a still young mistress with delicate but sharp
features. She stood by the fire combing the hair of a girl about
Maglena’s age.
Andy and the children stepped noiselessly in through the door. They
felt a burning desire to turn and, if possible, flee to the wilderness
again. But it was so late. They were tired and frozen and longed for
something warm, for a little water gruel or mush.
Two small boys of about Per-Erik’s and Magnus’s age caught sight of
them.
‘Usch! Mother, see what a tatterpack we have here,’ bawled one.
The mistress turned around. The children seemed to feel her sharp
eyes and pointed nose bore into them. They crept together and made
themselves as small as they could.
‘What are you doing here? This ain’t any hotel. We haven’t any more
than we eat up ourselves,’ she screamed, and advanced toward the
children with her hand raised.
‘Barbara-Carrie--listen, you,’ called a hollow voice from the lower
bed. ‘Don’t hurt those children. It will bring bad luck to the house. I
saw them in a dream last night.’
‘Shut up, old woman!’ almost barked the woman. But still it seemed that
the words had impressed her, for she turned away from the children and
went on with her work.
‘Give them the cold mush that was left after I fed the chickens this
morning. There is a little goats’ milk on the table in a bowl, and you
can give them the bread crusts that are left.’
‘Give them yourself,’ snapped the maid. ‘I’m going to get dressed to go
to the “wedding-farm” with the milk. All the rest of the milkmaids are
there already. But here there is never any order with anything.’
She went, but stopped hesitatingly at the door.
Grandmother called to her from the lower bed: ‘Brita, look out, girl!
I laid out the cards for you to-day--and there was only poverty and no
bread, with a jack of hearts between. You can take away the danger by
doing something good. Well, well, look out, you.’
Brita closed the door with her foot and came in again. She threw the
unappetizing bits of food at the children. More with fear than with
cold, they crept tremblingly to the hearth bench where the food had
been thrown.
‘Oh, you got my milk-bowl,’ yelled the younger boy, Johnnie.
And at once he had run forward and was trying to jerk it away from
Maglena. She held fast to it, and looked him steadily in the eyes.
‘Your mother said we could have it, so you can’t take it away from us.’
‘Mother!’ He stuck out his tongue at his mother. ‘I----’ he said
something coarse, but which meant ‘I don’t care for mother, or what she
says.’
Strangely enough, Maglena kept the bowl. This was a disappointment to
Erika, who had just jerked herself away from her mother’s hands to see
how the fight between the bad-tempered, stingy brother and the strange
beggar girl would end.
The little wanderers ate cold, watery mush, sour milk, and crusts of
bread--quiet, unhappy.
Grels came in just as the children were devoutly thanking God for food.
He looked wicked and odious. The old man, who fumbled with the stick of
wood trying to cut off a last piece, stood up hastily. He looked for
his crutch. But as usual the children had taken it from the back of his
chair and thrown it out on the floor. They howled with laughter when
the old man, half-creeping, with one leg dragging behind him, worked
himself over the floor to get it.
Andy, who saw where the crutch lay, went at once and picked it up. He
gave it to the old man, who with confused, bleary eyes looked up at him.
‘Where d-d-did this b-b-boy c-come from?’ he stammered with suspicion
and surprise in his voice.
‘Get away from the fire, young ones, so I can get there with the
coffee-pot,’ said the mistress to the strange children without paying
any attention to the behavior of her own.
‘Andy, help grandfather; he walks like mother did at the last,’
whispered Maglena. ‘It’s so slippery on the step.’
Andy went slowly, as if ashamed, after the old man. But when he came
out where no one made fun of him, he took fast hold of the old man’s
arm and helped him carefully down the steps and down the slippery,
uneven path that led to the little cottage where he lived.
The peasants’ old parents up in Norrland are called ‘receivers of
food’ or ‘old folks’ when they have given up their farm to the son
and his wife. The old people are given what they need of milk, flour,
potatoes, and such things. If the children on that farm are not good
and generous, it can be very hard for the old people.
The little cottage into which grandfather now stumbled was cold and
uncared-for, because old grandmother was sick and lay in the lower bed
up at the house. She lay there, not in order to get better care, but
because no one wanted to go down and cook for the old man now that the
old woman could not do it, and then one did not have to think about
attending to her. The servant, who usually kept a fire and looked out
for the old folks, had something else to think about to-night.
[Illustration: HE WAS TOO STIFF AND FROZEN TO BE ABLE TO PUT WOOD IN
THE GRATE AND LIGHT A FIRE. ANDY DID IT FOR HIM]
Shivering with cold, the old man prepared to lie down fully dressed
under the sheepskin in the lower bed. He was too stiff and frozen to
be able to put wood in the grate and light a fire.
Andy did it for him. He also put over the fire the coffee-pot that
stood on the hearth.
The old man sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at the boy. To him
he looked like an angel, gray and mended as his clothes were.
‘Y-you c-c-can s-sleep in the upper b-b-bed to-to-night,’ he stammered.
‘Maglena and Magnus too?’ asked Andy eagerly. He thought that life here
with the old man, who looked at him with friendly eyes, in the cold,
uncared-for cottage, was greatly preferable to the big light kitchen
where they only quarreled with one another. Lighter of heart, he ran up
to the house, after he had seen that the fire had caught and the old
man undressed, and in bed.
Grels stood on the step when Andy came up. He was noticeably
humble--actually friendly when he began to talk to Andy.
‘We’re going to go and look on at the wedding. Brita is going with the
milk and we’re going to follow and peek in at the bride.’
‘That will be fun for you,’ said Andy, and tried to pass Grels. But he
stood in the way.
‘Well, it will be just as much fun for you and the others as for us.’
‘They can’t go and look on here, can they?’
‘Any one can go to look. The boys in this village are mad at this bride
’cause she, who is so rich and pretty, took a man from outside the
parish who ain’t got a homestead and is such a fool that he says “no”
to gin. And so we’re going to act up to-night and scare them. We small
boys from this village and others too are going to be along when it
happens.’
‘But not us. Maglena and Magnus are tired and ought to go to bed.’
‘They’re the ones that want to go, and Brita and I have promised them.
They don’t look as though they’ve had much fun,’ added Grels with a
certain sympathy in his voice that moved Andy.
‘Well, if they want to, I’ll let them,’ said he.
Grels let him go by at once. Andy did not notice the evil gleam in his
eyes.
Maglena and Magnus came eagerly to meet him. Fatigue and discouragement
had left them. They were going to go and see the bride at the
neighboring farm. The minister’s wife herself had dressed her, and
she was so beautiful that the queen herself couldn’t be more so--in a
golden crown and her whole head covered with roses, and a red silk sash
and black silk skirt and bodice--and--and----!
‘Mons and Johnnie are real good to us now,’ they assured Andy.
‘Come,’ yelled Grels, and jerked Andy’s arm, ‘we’re going now. Brita is
all dressed up.’
The children, strangers and farm-children together, went off. Grels
pulled them with him when they wanted to stop and say good-night to
Golden Horn.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ‘WEDDING-FARM’
They came to the ‘wedding-farm.’ The doors stood open and the air
within was steamy with heat. Outside the windows stood crowds of
people. They were peeking in to see the bride.
Just as the children came up, she came out on the step to show herself.
The bridesmaids who had held the canopy over the bridal pair in the
church followed her.
It was certainly true that the young bride was beautiful. She was tall
and stately and wore a golden crown. Its little golden leaves tinkled
when she moved or shook hands, ‘thanking’ all the girls of the Village.
They had, as the custom was, come with milk for the cooked rice and the
curd-cake. The bride wore roses, roses in a wreath on her head and in a
garland from her shoulder to her waist; roses on the black silk skirt,
and, besides, a white veil and a wide red gold-flowered sash that
reached to the hem of her skirt.
She looked kind and gentle. Her eyes searched out the old, and the
little children who either were not able or dared not push themselves
forward. These she called to her, these she shook hands with or talked
to.
‘No, but see, three children I don’t know. They must come here so I
can thank them. It is good luck when wandering children greet you on
such a day.’
The bride came down the steps and took Andy, Maglena, and Magnus with
her up again. Something of suffering, emaciation, and yet something
bright and courageous seemed to rest over them that drew her to them.
Then they too were from ‘out of the parish’ as she would be in the
district to which she was going, ‘down in the south country,’ where her
young husband was a lumberman.
‘Now you are at a wedding, you know,’ she smiled at the children. ‘If
you are from Barren Moor, you’ve eaten bark bread for a couple of years
now. But to-day you’ll eat rice and wort-bread with butter, and meat,
and coffee bread as much as you can eat.’
The bride called to the cook, who stood on the step of the wash-house.
The children were to have a good big bundle of food when they were
going, she directed.
The neighbor’s children came in and were treated according to custom.
But the bride took no special notice of them.
The mountain children had a meal now such as they had never imagined.
Brita, who among other people was an entirely different girl, neat,
cheerful, and really kind, looked out for them quite unexpectedly. They
must go up and watch the dancing and games, she said, and see her
dance too, for that she really could do. She had hardly reached the
door with the children before a tall, lithe lumberman came and took her
by the hand.
The young people were already flying about in a round dance. A girl
followed the circle, inside, with a boy at her side.
She sang in a fine clear voice:
‘Yes, you in the ring may stamp, if you like,
Marry you want to, but can’t,
Dance with me you may, if you like,
But my heart belongs to me.’
But in spite of that, the girl with the fine voice chose another boy,
who thereat looked much pleased.
They swung around inside the circle, and now she sang:
‘Come, my friend, come,
Come, swing me around in the dance,
Hopp falla, la, la.
Happiness to-day, that is our law,
May sorrow never come, la, la.’
The bride and the bridegroom danced in the ring. They sang the same
happy dance-song that had such a sad though beautiful melody. They
looked into one another’s eyes, so young and fine and strong of heart.
Another song was taken up. Every one sang and took part in the round
dance.
The boy ran awkwardly inside the circle. He sang and the girl answered.
In the same way they kept on with one game after the other.
‘Here is my friend, the very best,
The one I want to keep,
In life and death, the very best.
‘You are my rose, my very heart,
Nothing shall us ever part,
Till death has won his will.’
Dance after dance followed steadily.
Andy and Maglena stood at the door. Magnus had crept behind them and
lay sleeping sweetly with his head so placed that the first comer could
give it an unmeant kick, or really step on him.
Now the round dances were over. The violins, two of them, began to
play. The fiddlers stamped out the time with their feet so that the
floor rocked.
The bridal pair danced.
They danced a few rounds with every single person: the bride at last,
even with Andy, who, shy because of his clothes, and awkward, ran along
without keeping time, as if he had been a three-year-old child. The
bride gave him a bright twenty-five öre piece[11] when she left him at
the door with a kind glance.
[11] Twenty-five öre = about seven cents.
Maglena, the little girl, was also to dance with the bridegroom.
She threw off the old shawl. Her hair fell down on her shoulders,
curly, shining so that it made her pretty in spite of her clumsy
clothes. Her cheeks were red, as if she were shy and proud at the same
time. But she kept time, and she danced so well that those who looked
on laughed with pleasure at the sure little feet.
She too received a twenty-five öre piece, and one ‘for the little boy
with them’ too. And they were given more than one bun and good cake for
their bundle.
They had so much fun that they shone with happiness as they stood
there. People were so good to them.
Children who had come to the wedding crept forward and wanted to make
friends.
Suddenly Maglena turned to Andy.
‘Boy, I hear Golden Horn!’
‘Don’t be silly! You can’t hear her so far, and here where there is
so much noise.’ Andy looked around confusedly. For a while he had
forgotten ordinary life, the responsibility and care of those who were
dependent on him.
Frightened, he looked over at the fiddlers’ corner. His glance
instinctively sought Grels and the two other boys whose sly, evil faces
he remembered having seen there when he was dancing with the bride.
Without a word, he bent down to Magnus.
‘Now we’re going to dance the crown off the bride,’ said a little girl
who looked a great deal like the bride. She held out her hand with a
sweet smile to Andy.
‘Hurry! We’re going to drink coffee and have coffee bread and cookies
after,’ said little Anna, who had stood and looked at Andy a long time,
eagerly.
Andy looked into her bright eyes that seemed to draw him. But then he
pushed away her hand. ‘Girl, I must go. Maglena hears the goat, and
that’s never good. She hears, even if she can’t hear.’
With these words, incomprehensible to little Anna, Andy made off with
the children.
‘Come back to-morrow!’ she called after Andy.
‘Thanks, we’d like to.’
With that the children were gone.
CHAPTER XVIII
FLIGHT
Just as they ran breathlessly down the yard, they met a crowd that
nearly frightened them out of their senses. Magnus screamed shrilly.
It was a troop of men and boys who, with shirts spotted with red paint
on top of their clothes, came stealthily up to the ‘wedding-farm.’ They
had scarecrow faces of birch-bark, with big round holes for eyes, and
long beards of lichen from an old fir in the woods. They swung burning
torches.
With great fear the children recognized the voice of the leader. It was
the man from the neighboring farm.
He recognized them too, and with a wild cry started after them.
‘Run, children, run! I’ll trip him. Run quick!’
And how they ran, Magnus and Maglena! They flew faster than they ever
did as goatherds in the summer when they ran after runaway goats.
Andy stopped short when the man was just upon him. He tripped him
nimbly with his foot. With a furious curse, the big coarse fellow fell
to the ground.
‘Well, just wait, I’ll get you to-morrow; then I’ll beat the boldness
out of you!’ bawled the man, who stood up clumsily, but ran on when he
saw the rest nearing the scene of the festivities.
Andy had heard and seen enough to realize that a few of the village
boys wanted to fight the out-of-the-parish bridegroom who had taken
the pretty wealthy bride from their village. They had drunk gin to get
up their courage. On the wedding-farm, where it had been so bright and
happy, where they had sung psalms and read a prayer after the meal,
and then danced to the joyous songs, there would now be uproar and
confusion.
Andy ran with all his might--flew--when he heard a wailing shriek from
the children.
The din came from the woodshed where they had left Golden Horn. The
goat was bleating dully. Something had happened to her.
Yes, something had happened to her! Something that had nearly made an
end of the good, fine old animal’s life, if Maglena, in the midst of
the wedding joy, had not seemed to hear Golden Horn bleat.
Golden Horn, their little maid, big doll, golden pearl, lay on the
chips, panting, bleeding at the neck and body. The children could
see it clearly, for it was late at night and the moon shone right in
through the little window in the shed.
Andy was as pale as a ghost. The little ones wept. They knelt beside
Golden Horn.
‘Take off your apron, Maglena. I’ll put snow on the wounds and tie
them up with my comforter. Golden Horn has been bitten,’ he continued
harshly. ‘The one who could let grandfather creep after his crutch
could do this too! And some one has sicked a mean dog to do it.’
‘Yes, they’ve held her, ’cause Golden Horn could always save herself
from dogs--and look here,’ continued Maglena, sobbing. ‘Not a single
hair on her horns. She didn’t have a _chance_ to save herself. It was
all the boys here that were here and held her; it smells of that horrid
tobacco that awful Grels chews,’ sniffed Maglena.
‘That man will think up something awful for me to-morrow,’ said Andy
with a moody, reflective air. ‘Mad as he was when I tripped him up.’
‘It isn’t any fun in this place at all,’ whined Magnus. ‘You feel so
sort of uncertain.’
‘We’ll go away, and go this minute,’ whispered Andy.
‘The boys can’t be far away. I saw how they ran away and walked crooked
down in the ditch by the fence. I suppose they got scared when we came
back so soon, ’cause they maybe thought we’d stay there all night.’
‘Just as we came we heard Golden Horn bleating so queer. The boys
yelled “sick ’em, sick ’em”; it was that mean gray dog that ran in and
bit Golden Horn,’ related Maglena pantingly.
‘But they got scared when I came.’ Magnus entered into the conversation.
‘They’ll be at the “wedding-farm” for a while,’ interrupted Andy with a
compassionate glance at Magnus. ‘Right in the middle of the fight, and
the farmhand is there too, so we can’t go there, and we can’t stay here
either.’
‘Golden Horn, please--nice girl, get up now, and come out on the sled,’
continued Andy.
Golden Horn, who apparently understood the children’s anxiety and
shared their fears, rose painfully.
Supported by Andy and Maglena, she stumbled out. The sheepskin was
carefully spread out on the sled and Golden Horn understood why. She
climbed up and sank down with a groaning sigh into the box-like sled.
‘What wrong have I done here, to be treated like this?’ thought Golden
Horn.
The children fussed swiftly and silently over Golden Horn.
‘We’ll go up the mountain here,’ whispered Andy. ‘They have the dog
with them on the “wedding-farm.” He’ll see us if we go by and that will
be the end of Golden Horn, and very likely of us too.’
‘It is a good thing that the sled tracks won’t show,’ went on Maglena.
‘There is an ice street up the path to the mountain.’
The children started. Andy pulled, Maglena pushed, and Magnus walked
alongside to see that the goat was all right.
‘I don’t like to go away without saying a word of thanks to the old
folks here,’ said Andy, and stopped when they had passed the barns.
‘But, my goodness! We’ve got to hurry,’ objected Maglena.
‘Yes, they can take us, and I can’t fight them alone,’ muttered Magnus.
‘Stand here just a minute, anyway,’ said Andy in a trembling voice.
In a second he was gone.
Into the cottage to grandfather he ran. The old man was sitting upright
staring straight before him, listening. He knew by experience what was
going on at the wedding-farm. He used to think that such things were
‘boys’ play,’ and only a fool would not take part. But now he saw it
differently. He worried also about the strange children who were so
completely in his grandchildren’s power. They would be frightened,
tortured, tormented. He knew well how these children treated every one
they thought they could overpower, like old, weak, and sick people,
poor, unprotected children, and defenseless animals.
The old man started when Andy came to him with a cup of warm coffee.
‘Look here, it is cold to-night, and the coffee was warm in the pot.
I’ll put more wood on the fire. And then I want to thank you so much,
grandfather.’
‘Y-you were g-g-going to s-s-sleep here?’
‘I don’t dare. They tried to kill the goat. And they want to hurt us
too.’
‘That’s the w-way.’ The old man nodded in agreement. ‘I am glad that
y-you c-c-came because I w-wanted to g-g-give you this w-watch.’
Grandfather took down the silver watch he had hanging on the wall.
‘It’s s-soon over w-with m-me. I d-don’t s-s-see anything either.
T-take the w-w-atch. My g-grandchildren c-c-can’t have it! T-take it!
And may God f-follow y-y-you.’
Andy stood with the watch in his hand--stiff with surprise and anxiety,
as if he had been threatened with angry words by the old man instead of
having received such a gift.
‘T-take the s-skin h-here in the other b-b-bed t-too. It is c-c-cold.
We d-don’t n-need it. The old w-w-woman w-will s-soon d-die too. Hurry,
boy!’ said he suddenly, without stuttering. ‘They can be back any time.
_Hurry! Do you hear----!_’
‘I must thank you first, grandfather--because you’ve been so good to
us. I don’t know whether I can take the watch--and not the sheepskin
either.’
‘Y-you m-m-must t-take what I g-g-give you, b-boy! It isn’t too s-soon
for m-me to b-be d-doing a little g-g-good here. It’s been s-so light
for m-me s-s-since I thought of d-d-oing this. R-run! Now, right away.’
‘Well, thank you, grandfather--Oh, and remember me to mother there!’
Andy straightened the pillow under the man’s stiff neck, tucked in the
sheepskin around him, and arranged the wood on the fire so it would
burn a long time.
With the watch in his pocket and the skin over his arm, he stopped
inside the door which he had already opened.
He took off the worn fur cap and bowed.
‘Many, many thanks, grandfather.’
But grandfather did not seem to hear him. He lay with the unaccustomed
laboriously folded hands on the cover, mumbling to himself.
CHAPTER XIX
FIRE
‘You were an awfully long time getting back,’ said Maglena, when
Andy came running back to the sled where she and Magnus had squeezed
themselves in beside Golden Horn.
‘It was a little hard to leave grandfather. But I got this from him.’
Andy’s eyes shone as he held up the silver watch that actually ticked
and kept good time, as he spread the new robe over the goat.
A strange happiness came over the children; they talked about how good
the old people were there, and how spiteful the children were toward
them.
They chattered pantingly. The road led uphill, and was bumpy and uneven
where the lumbermen had driven over it with the heavy sleds.
‘We’ve got to hurry as fast as we can,’ said Andy. ‘They can be after
us any minute.’
‘A man on horseback came from the wedding-farm,’ enlightened Maglena.
‘Maybe he went after the sheriff. Several of those that had blood-red
shirts have run away too in different directions.’
‘The farmhand can be home any time now too,’ said Andy.
He braced the stout hob-nailed shoes against the clumps of ice and
pulled with all his strength.
It had grown very cold during the night, after yesterday’s thaw.
The crusted snow lay like a field of ice on either side of the road.
They pulled the sled up away from the tiring, uneven timber-road. And
then they were off over the blue snow-crust, over level meadow-land
where the snow still lay like a blanket, over ice-covered rocks,
streams, and marshes.
Andy took his directions from the stars, saw that Orion was in the
south, and the morning star straight in front of him. In general
they followed the river’s meanderings. On both sides of it lay the
Dalecarlian parishes extending far up toward woods and mountains,
though broken by great stretches of forest land and big lakes.
The river ran from west to east, out to the ocean, and the children
followed the same direction.
But now the thing to do was to get away from the settlement and into
the deep woods, to escape dangerous pursuit on the roads, and to get
past the village through the protecting woods into another parish.
Morning had already come. The sun peeped out as if in play from behind
the pointed mountain-tops in the distance, where Maglena thought the
world came to an end. Then it hid behind another mountain-top. It
looked forth again and shone on all the little cottage windows and into
the eyes of sleep-dazed children. Once more the sun played peek-a-boo
behind a high rounded peak.
But then it came forth, rising, shining brightly, casting a gleaming
carpet of thin gold over the whole snowy country. It spread gold over
mountain-tops and green firs, and over pines, gold on every single pine
needle, and over tree-trunks that now shone a golden red.
It was matchlessly beautiful. The children felt no fatigue, not even
hunger. They had sat down quietly on the edge of the sled and watched
how the sun rose and rose.
Now it not merely shone. They began to feel warmth from it too. Maglena
took Magnus by the hands. She felt free and absolutely happy far away
from a settlement, not a farm in sight. Songs and dance melodies
floated through her head. She wanted to dance, and she hopped out on
the crusted snow in polka rhythm with Magnus.
‘You are my rose, my very heart,
Nothing shall us ever part.’
And down she plumped with one foot through the snow. ‘Did you ever? The
sun tripped me up!’ She laughed and scrambled up again.
‘Yes, and drives us away into the woods to find shelter. I don’t know
how we are going to find a tree with really big branches,’ said Andy,
who was sun-blind and saw black and yellow and red everywhere, for he
had sat and stared earnestly right at the sun, which rose so rapidly
over the mountains.
They had come in upon a clearing where the snow-crust no longer hid
cut timber, stumps, and brush-heaps, and hurried now into the deep
woods where the snow still bore.
Golden Horn felt better, or perhaps it was because the bumps against
the tree-trunks now and then did not appeal to her. Without warning,
she kicked herself free of the robe and jumped away into the woods in
her invalid’s bandages of apron and muffler around her stomach and neck.
With unbelievable ease the goat found the big close fir which could
serve as a house, just the kind the children had sought in vain all
morning.
Golden Horn stood right under the giant fir whose branches spread
themselves out like an impenetrable roof. The snow had melted away
under it, or perhaps it had never been able to gather there.
‘Ma-a-a,’ bleated Golden Horn. ‘Ma-a-a. Here lives a wise goat who,
although she lay on a sled with an apron around her stomach, kept her
eyes open. Ma-a-a. Step in, little man-kids, and I’ll treat you to warm
milk, soft moss to rest on, and sweet frozen whortleberries and juniper
berries to feast on. Ma-a-a, if you please!’
‘She’s inviting us in. See how big and proud she looks,’ smiled
Maglena. ‘Now I’m going to stand at the door until she asks me to come
in and sit down.’
Maglena lifted a heavy close branch, went in, and stood still, looking
roguishly at the goat.
Magnus followed and took up the same attitude, as when one comes on a
visit to people.
‘Ma-a-a-a,’ said Golden Horn, ‘you’re welcome; come in and sit down.’
She tripped in toward the big tree-trunk where the high roots made
comfortable resting-places for both humans and goats.
Andy came ‘in,’ dragging the sled after him. He cleared it of the
knapsack, the dry tarred wood, and the robes. Then he tipped it upside
down on all four posts. Maglena set out the little bowls of foamy warm
milk, and the bread and rolls from the wedding-farm.
‘The table’ stood beside the root-benches. The children repeated their
little prayer before a meal, ate slowly and quietly, and felt like rich
farmers in their own cottage.
Maglena ‘cleared off the table,’ arranged a comfortable place to sit
on the other side of the tree-trunk, and then washed the bowls with a
‘dish-cloth’ of snow. Then she tipped them against each other in an
orderly row.
She made up a bed for them all in one of the spaces between the roots,
with the old robe under and the new over.
Andy and she whispered together so that Golden Horn should not hear
what they said. They wondered if they could take her with them in the
nicely made bed.
‘She’ll have to be the old folks with us,’ said Maglena hurriedly, when
Golden Horn, who felt entirely at home, without the least doubt or
thought as to whether it was fitting or not, climbed up and lay down
on the robe.
‘Yes, and then we’ll have to be really good to her,’ said Andy eagerly.
‘I’ll go out and get some young birch and pine branches for her!
Because, of course, she hasn’t any teeth, and it will be like soft
bread and coffee for old grandmother.’
‘Just think, she is smarter than I am,’ said Magnus, coming with two
fists full of frozen whortleberries for his brother and sister. He had
picked them practically ‘in the house.’
‘’Cause when I went and scratched and hunted for water, she ran right
down to a little creek right near here. And now she goes to bed, ’cause
she thinks that we ought to do as she does, after walking all day and
all night.’
‘But it’s the middle of the day,’ objected Andy, who thought that a
sensible suggestion ought to come from him, and not from the little boy
or the goat.
‘Well, then the sunshine will have to be moonlight for me,’ Maglena
entered into the conversation. ‘I am so tired that I can’t even undress
and dry my shoes in front of the fire.’ She pretended to warm her hands
over a fire.
‘I can’t dry them for you either, Magnus,’ she added. ‘So you’ll have
to put them by the bed.’ Maglena was entirely serious.
‘I think I’ll throw myself down just as I am,’ thought Magnus, ‘’cause
I just came from the woods and I’m all tired out. I’ve been cutting
down some small trees in the clearing and my back and arms are nearly
broken.’
‘But don’t you think you ought to close the damper so it gets warm?’
smiled Andy, a little roguishly.
‘Dear me, yes! But I was almost afraid it would smoke, you see.’ But
Maglena stretched herself up laboriously and pushed a branch to the
side.
With the tired, worried look of the mistress of the house she dragged
herself to the bed, where she found it hard to keep up the fun. ‘The
old folks’ here on the farm knew how to keep the upper hand with the
children, for Grandmother Golden Horn braced herself against the stout
and solid trunk and stuck out all four feet as if she meant to have
the bed all to herself. If she hadn’t been ‘the old folks,’ one could
almost have been angry with her.
The mistress stood at a loss for beds for the young folks and children.
But then she understood what old grandmother wanted. She was in pain.
She wanted a new bandage over her stomach.
And she got it.
The whole household crept to bed in one heap, with the robe over their
eyes to keep out the ‘moonlight’ which forced its way in between the
thick, close tree-trunks and warmed the air, so that the children
dreamed that they slept in a heated house with the new thick cover over
them.
[Illustration: HERE UNDER THE TREE, WITH THE THICK BRANCHES RESTING ON
THE GROUND, THEY COULD BE SAFE]
Golden Horn lay on top of them to warm them and herself. She lay
there chewing her cud and blinking with long narrow eyes at the rays
of sunlight, listening and observant of every sound. There were wild
animals in the woods to look out for, and there were people and dogs.
Golden Horn heard them!
Proudly she gazed around. Here under the tree, with the thick branches
resting on the ground, they could be safe; here no one could see them.
The goat chewed her cud all day long with half-closed yet watchful
eyes. The silver watch, which hung on a knot in the tree-trunk, ticked
away hour after hour. The ‘moonlight’ paled and cooled, sank into a
rosy red evening light. That too paled and died away. And all the time
the children slept.
They slept when the real moon, accompanied by frost, came up into
the sky, slept although distant steps and the noise of people and of
barking dogs could be heard not far away, slept when the woods became
quiet and dead.
But then they woke up. Something furry and warm came creeping,
stealthily creeping, and slipped softly in under the sheepskin robe, at
which Golden Horn, with one jump and short indignant bleatings, darted
away.
‘Purr-r-r.’
Maglena and Andy sat up at the same time--absolutely astounded at the
close dark ceiling that they had over them. They recognized the cat
that had awakened them by her mewing. It was the spotted gray ‘ice
cat.’
So surprised were they that she had been able to follow them the
tortuous way they had come that they forgot to think how unpleasant it
was to wake up in the dark woods in the middle of the night and without
fire. But they remembered it when they were so cold that their teeth
chattered.
If only they had had a match, just one, it certainly would have been
possible to have a fire. The whole bunch of tarred sticks lay where
Maglena had marked out the fireplace. She shook so with cold that she
could scarcely talk.
‘I can’t get up, and I can’t milk. We’ll just freeze to death.’
‘There isn’t anything to do but creep down under the robe again and lie
there like Charles the Twelfth’s army and wait for morning, when the
sun comes,’ said Andy, and prepared bravely to creep down under the
cover again.
‘But the cat must have milk; she hasn’t had any for so long, so I’ve
got to get up,’ shivered Maglena.
She threw father’s old coat over her.
While she sat and milked with the coat over her shoulders, a fir cone
fell down on her head with a popping sound and then hopped down into
one of the yawning empty jacket pockets.
‘This is a fine cow.[12] Magnus shall have it as soon as he wakes
up,’ thought Maglena, perfectly content when she put her hand into the
pocket and pulled forth the fir cone, soft and pliable, sticky with
resin.
[12] Swedish children have whole dairy farms of fir cones of different
sizes, so a fir cone always means a new ‘cow’ to them.
Maglena felt as do all others who find anything. She felt a desire to
find out if there was more of the same kind, so she dug again into the
pocket where she had found the ‘cow.’
Yes, there was actually something more!
There was something which all at once drove away the awful, frozen
sensation of fear of the dark which had weighed upon Maglena and
tortured her as she sat in the blackness under the tree and milked.
Why, it was like a miracle--as if mother had been with her children
again, and helped them. For Maglena’s fingers, groping about in the
pocket had found two--_matches_!
As long as they had carried the old jacket, used it as a blanket and
thrown it about, they had never noticed that there was anything in the
pockets.
Of course, the matches had been there since ages ago, when father still
worked in the woods and sometimes smoked his little pipe.
Maglena held the little sticks in her hand. She smelled of them. Good!
They had the real phosphorus smell.
She was so happy she could have shrieked aloud. Her lightning-like
thought was to call the joyous news to Andy.
But--no, it was best to be quiet. For just think if the matches didn’t
light! Then she would only have lured Andy to be happy over something
that would then become only greater unhappiness and disappointment.
Maglena, stooping and stumbling, groped her way hastily to the
fireplace. Near there on a branch she had hung the knapsack.
She fumbled and searched for it, pitch dark as it was.
Yes, there it was at last. And right under it lay the bundle of dry
tarred wood which she had placed in the ‘pretend stove.’
Oh, if--if--_if_ there only was life in the little bits of phosphorus!
She struck the match with a trembling hand, one, two, three, four times
against the sole of her warm little boot, which of course she had not
taken off.
But she was too eager, too impetuous. The match gleamed and shone a
moment just when Maglena had seized it so bravely that--it broke--and
then sank down on the wet moss--and went out.
She was ready to cry aloud with fright and sorrow. Yes, to shriek like
a tiny child.
Must she give up hope of fire now when she had so nearly succeeded?
Fire! It was warmth for frozen limbs. Fire! It was light and comfort
for the lonely little ones out in the wilderness. Fire! Fire meant
house and home.
And only one match! Such a weak miserable little wretch.
Maglena’s heart beat fast. She stood with the match between her fingers
without daring to try again.
Her hands trembled, and she seemed to feel the match bending in her
fingers as if ready to break.
At last she sat down determinedly on the ground--spread out her apron
on the moss, placed the wood on top. Then she put out her shod foot.
She struck once--twice--thrice--
Tears came into her eyes, her lips trembled.
But once more--steadily, so as not to break the match, calmly, lightly--
‘Ratsch!’
A bright little yellow and blue flame sprang forth!
Quick ‘as a spark’ Maglena thrust the bright little flame against the
dry stick.
It caught fire at once! It burned with a bright red light, the smoke
curled up into the air, black, with the odor of tar.
‘Andy,’ called Maglena in a muffled voice as if afraid that the very
sound of her voice would put out the fire.
Andy, who had lain with closed eyes and imagined that he was one of
Charles the Twelfth’s doughty warriors, looked up.
He shot up like an arrow and threw the robe aside.
‘Why, girl! Well--but--Maglena! What in the world?’
Maglena told him proudly and smilingly the whole wonderful adventure of
the fire.
CHAPTER XX
IN THEIR OWN GREEN COTTAGE
Andy soon had a fire burning, and practically in the middle of the
floor.
It did not go out, though the melting snow dripped down from the trunk
and the snow-wet branches.
There was still food in the knapsack. But after they had eaten, it was
evening again, and bedtime.
‘We can’t go to bed again now, when it’s so nice,’ said Maglena.
‘Besides, we don’t know whether it’s the middle of the night or toward
morning.’
She fussed busily over the knapsack.
‘We don’t know! I guess I have a watch that tells what time it is!’
‘It is soon morning, I feel that ’cause I feel just like working. Funny
the moon isn’t higher. It was just a little above the mountain when I
was out. If it isn’t going down, maybe, instead.’
‘Have you ever heard of the moon going down in the east? But--but--I
don’t know what’s the matter with the watch! It’s going, but it’s
altogether wrong.’
Andy listened to the watch, shook it as he had seen big people do.
‘How far wrong is it?’
‘It says eight o’clock. It can’t be eight in the morning when it is
dark and the moon is up.’
‘Well, it must be eight in the evening.’
Andy began to laugh.
‘I believe some wood-nymph has bewitched our eyes.’
‘And wits too,’ laughed Maglena, ‘’cause otherwise all the signs would
have told us it was evening. The snow wouldn’t bear so the sun must
have just gone down, and Orion is high in the sky. But I won’t go to
bed yet. It’s a long time before night.’
Andy had been out and came in with his arms full of brush that he laid
on the fire.
‘I hear some yelping far away that sounds like a dog,’ he said.
‘The foxes are out, you know. No wild animals will come here as long as
we have a fire, and no ghosts either,’ she added with a stealthy glance
out through the fir’s black branches. ‘We’ll put the sled in front of
the fire, and then I’ll sew roses. I have two mittens to sew on.’
‘Then I’ll whittle and carve out wooden spoons.’ Andy took the
materials out of the sled.
‘But eat first, said the peasant when the bath-house burned. I don’t
milk only for the cat, you know; I suppose we can eat at the same time
now that you are master and I am mistress.’
Maglena sat down on the sled beside Andy with the wooden bowl in her
hand. The cat came and rubbed herself against her, purring.
Golden Horn pushed her head through the branches near them. In ‘the
bed,’ Magnus snored loudly.
‘Oh, but it is fine here, Andy! It seems as though I can’t bear to
think of going out to the settlements any more.’
‘You were happy at the wedding, I thought.’
‘Yes, because of the songs and dances and the people that were so good
to us. They danced and sang this way: “Hi, ho, you scornful girl.”’
Maglena had finished her supper. She sprang up and began to repeat the
songs and dances.
‘The mistresses on the farms don’t act like that,’ remarked Andy, but
he looked very happy as he sat and carved spoons with the sharp knife
gleaming in the firelight.
‘Goodness, no. I must darn our stockings. The roses will have to wait a
while.’
She threw off her shoes and stockings and spread out her toes before
the fire as she began to mend the holes, to-day quite large. It wasn’t
so often she had a chance to work.
‘Kle-vitt, hu-itt!’ shrieked an owl that flew close to the ‘cottage
door.’
‘Nasty noise,’ muttered Andy.
‘He is good, I think. He calls “look-it, look it, watch out,” so that
mice and birds that he wants will have time to hide. Just think if he
didn’t say anything, just came and took them.’
‘I don’t like it when they say that birds talk, now like the thrush.
I don’t believe he says “knife thief, knife thief,” when he sits up in
the fir and sings all night in the spring.’
‘No, I don’t believe it either. And not that the other thrush that he’s
talking to says “poor soldier, poor soldier, why do you ride, why do
you ride?”’
‘And not that the other one answers “horse cannot go on, horse cannot
go on.” What fun would the little birds have if they only sat and made
up such stuff?’ sniffed Maglena.
‘It’s people that have invented that, of course,’ said Andy, and held
up the spoon against the firelight to see if the bowl was right. ‘They
think they hear around them what they really hear inside themselves.’
‘He had stolen a knife, you think, the one that heard the thrush say
“knife thief”?’
‘I think so.’
‘But “poor soldier.” What sense is there in that?’
‘I think,’ said Andy, and let his work drop while he gazed dreamily
into the fire, ‘I think that those words are left from war-times here,
you know, when the Russians were here and burned farms and were so
cruel.’
‘Our thrushes didn’t think it was too bad about the Russians, I’m sure,
or that they had to sit and ride,’ muttered Maglena. ‘No one could have
felt sorry for the Russians.’
‘Well, it wasn’t only Russians that were soldiers,’ said Andy
gently. ‘It could be soldiers from here that the thrush talked about.
Grandfather was in the war and fought. And that’s why no one has been
able to take our country away from us.’
‘Because grandfather was a soldier?’ teased Maglena.
‘Because _all_ the men here were soldiers, you see.’
Andy straightened up and his eyes became proud and earnest.
‘The Russians couldn’t take us, and no one else dared either. It was
just as hard then as now, and they ate bark bread in hard years,
grandfather said. But, you see, they were soldiers, anyway, every one.’
‘And walked in the woods and were tired,’ added Maglena, in a tender,
compassionate voice. ‘Of course, it was for such people that the thrush
sang “poor soldier.”’
‘Yes, and even though the soldier was poor and tired, he was careful of
his horse, anyway. You know that’s the kind of people I think are real
people. That’s the kind of soldier I’d like to be if I could have what
I want above all things on earth.’
Andy took up his work and went on with it, quietly and eagerly, with
a deeply secretive air. He had mumbled the last words so softly that
Maglena had not paid any attention to them.
‘Take off your stockings so I can darn them,’ said Maglena without the
slightest doubt of its being necessary. It was also without the least
objection that Andy pulled up the stiff leather strings in his coarse
shoes and worked off the stockings.
‘It is awfully nice to sit like this,’ said Maglena. ‘But you don’t
want to be a soldier, do you?’
‘Yes, if there were war, I should. I shouldn’t want to let enemy people
take our country away from us, should I?’
‘But you said once,’ continued Maglena stubbornly, ‘that you wanted to
be a carpenter and think up all sorts of things to make. It was when we
left the juryman’s out in the Nolen parish.’
‘Yes, because I’d never been in such a stable-room before.’
‘You’ve been in a lot this winter, too.’
‘That may be, and in most of them the master and men and boys have been
making things. They’ve mended sleds. The farmhands have made traces and
shafts, and the boys small shovels and rakes and such things.’
‘What did they do at the juryman’s that was different, then?’
‘What did they do! Well, you must know, the juryman himself was working
at the finest sled with a driver’s seat and a nice curved front.’
‘Like the sled at the wedding-farm?’
‘Just exactly. All three boys, his sons and big fine fellows, were
making an organ to play on. They say they have them in the lowland
parishes, and the playing is supposed to sound like when people sing in
church with four kinds of voices.’
‘Boy, if I go to the world’s end, I will see and hear such playing.’
Maglena struck her knee with her hand deep in Andy’s coarse gray
goats’-hair stocking.
‘They had copied this after an organ at the minister’s in Sola. And
even though they were so fine that they could do such wonderful things,
they got up at five o’clock in the morning, anyway, and went to the
woods with axes, and sat on the sled and drove. Never anything stuck-up
about them. Now, these are real people, and when I saw them I thought
I’d be a big farmer and fine carpenter, too, of course.’
‘Well, I saw that the mistress in the kitchen was fine too, but I
didn’t think of being a juryman’s wife for all that,’ mused Maglena.
She saw with pleasure how the giant hole in Andy’s stocking shrank
under her nimble fingers.
‘Was she a carpenter, the juryman’s wife?’ asked Andy with a
mischievous gleam in his eye.
‘Yes, she was! She made things in her way, and as women-folk do,
when they are the right kind. If her husband put together sleds and
shovels and organs, she put together linen thread and linen cloth and
woolen yarn for stockings and homespun clothes and for dresses for the
women-folk.’
‘That’s the kind of woman I’d like you to be!’
‘Her little girls helped with the spinning, and went out in the barn
with the maids and milked, and still they were so jolly and nice to
us, Magnus and me. And the grown women sang songs and verses while
they sat spinning. And I’ve never seen such nice spinning. Do you
know,’ Maglena added shyly and doubtfully, ‘do you know, Maja-Greta,
their daughter, said that there were fairies on their farm, nice good
fairies.’
‘The old farmhand said so to me too, when he was alone after the others
had gone out to the peat bog.’
‘He--said so! What did he say?’
Maglena threw the darned stocking to Andy and stared at him with
shining, frightened eyes.
‘He said that small fairies had always been there. They lived under the
ground near the stable door. But they come up sometimes so they can see
them. And they are good-natured to the farm-people.’
‘If the farm-people do as they want them to, yes,’ interrupted Maglena.
‘O-oh, how the owls scream here!’ She cast a frightened glance about
her. ‘Kitty, kitty, come here and make me feel safe.’
She took the cat that lay on father’s old shirt up into her arms,
caressed and fondled it.
‘Do you know, Andy,’ she continued, ‘that once a servant swore at a
horse in the stable, and he got such a box on the ear that his face was
swollen for several days.’
‘He deserved it. Look, what a fine spoon! Now I’m going to make some
small spoons. It is hard for children to eat with these small troughs.’
‘Yes, he deserved it, the servant.’ Maglena took up the subject again,
for, gruesome as she found it, she could not let it go. ‘A maid there
that said she had such a pain she couldn’t spin and yet went to a dance
secretly had the yarn so snarled when she was going to spin again that
she was a whole skein behind the others, and she was disgraced.’
‘_She_ deserved that. Otherwise the fairies aren’t mean except three
days before Christmas. We must remember to stay in then,’ said Andy, a
little doubtfully, puzzled as to whether he ought to take it seriously
or not.
‘’Cause then Lusse is out and wants to take Christian children with him
under the ground,’ whispered Maglena with bright, frightened eyes.
‘Yes, he told about that too, the old man,’ assured Andy.
‘And once, Maja-Greta told me, her grandmother had told her what she
saw, when she lay in the granary, and was young and had an abscess in
her throat.’
Maglena spoke as if it were a part of youth to have an abscess in the
throat.
‘It was midsummer,’ she continued, ‘and grandmother had fixed up in the
granary, swept and brought in leaves and fruit blossoms.’
‘And lilies-of-the-valley too, I imagine,’ suggested Andy, who was
deeply interested in Maglena’s story.
‘I don’t know. But while she lay there awake she saw tiny, tiny people
come up out of the floor. There were fathers and mothers and old
folks, just as with us, but only half an ell tall.’
‘Dressed like us?’
‘Yes, in skirts and waists, and the men in kilts with belts around the
waist and gray breeches and beards.’
‘Then they were brownies, as we had too.’ Andy settled the question.
‘No, they were fairies. They were dressed nicer and weren’t as old as
brownies. More like people. And then, what do you suppose, up came
young people and small children that were only one fourth as high;
and took hands and danced in a ring. Maja-Greta’s grandmother could
hear the songs they sang. Maja-Greta sang them now, too, but I can’t
remember them. Her brother can play them on the violin and they make
you sad, said Maja-Greta. Yes; they make cowards out of some people.’
‘Then I don’t want to hear such songs.’
‘They hadn’t sounded sad though, when those _little_ people danced
to them. They looked so awfully sweet and funny that grandmother
laughed, and with that the abscess broke. The little folk were thirsty
after dancing and wanted a drink and there wasn’t a drop of water in
the granary. Grandmother felt sorry for the tiny things, so hot, and
fanning themselves with their aprons, so she got up and went to the
well after water in an earthenware dish.’
‘That was the right thing to do.’
‘Yes, it was, and when she came with the water, they were still dancing
and playing. She dozed off, and when she woke up, she was well. And
what do you think, boy, there was a silver spoon in the dish, and I’ve
seen that spoon!’
‘They probably live in the woods too, the fairies,’ said Andy
thoughtfully.
‘Those are wood-nymphs. They are women, tall, and with beautiful
faces. They whirl and dance and bewitch people in the woods so that
they forget God and the right. And then they laugh, and when you see
their backs they are hollow like troughs. But it is dangerous to talk
about wood-nymphs when you are in the woods. Oh, goodness gracious,
Andy--there is something moving out there!’
Maglena crept close to her brother.
‘You must put more wood on the fire, but you mustn’t leave me. See now
again? No, you don’t see anything; it isn’t everybody that can see. It
looked like two eyes right in the black branches.’
‘There?--Dear me, don’t you know Golden Horn?’
‘Golden Horn, that lay there on the bed just now when I went after
yarn?’
Maglena sounded astonished and unconvinced, as if the goat would not
have been able to get out of such a well-timbered house unnoticed.
Magnus sat up yawning, not the least surprised at the ‘cottage,’ that
was, after all, quite unusual. But of course he saw the fire and his
brother and sister and Golden Horn and the cat. Maglena called to him.
She had milk and bread for him beside the fire.
When he had eaten, it was much past their regular bedtime. It was
nearly midnight. Magnus had to roll into bed again.
Andy looked ‘out’ before he curled up in bed. The moon shone still
and clear. The stars beckoned and smiled like mother’s eyes. He felt
protected and secure.
But Maglena found it pleasantest ‘in the house’; she couldn’t force
herself to stick her nose outside the branches of the tree.
CHAPTER XXI
MASTER AND MISTRESS
The children woke up early in the morning, long before the sun was up.
It was very cold so early in the morning, so they crept down under the
cover again.
It was pleasant beyond words to lie like this and hear the birds wake
up one after the other.
The crows were earliest. They croaked like fire-watchmen, with rough
coarse voices. They began at once to clamor about rats and birds’ eggs,
and soon flew boisterously out of the woods.
Magpies peeped out of their well-made nests high in the tree-tops.
They did not have their beaks outside the nest before they laughed.
They laughed because a fox far away had caught a rabbit, and become
frightened and left part of it for their breakfast. They laughed at the
spring birds that had dared come north into the snow so early. They
seemed to have forgotten that nowadays there was famine, with winter
lasting until the sun was high in the heavens.
‘Ke-ke-ke-ke. They’ll fall from the branches, every one, starved to
death, frozen to death.’ And they laughed at the children who had
found a nest in the woods. For that matter, they knew the Barren Moor
children well. More than once they had laughed at them when they had
been in the woods gathering small branches and dragging their burdens
to little gray man-nests. They had seen them pick berries on the wide
marshes near houses. And now the foolish youngsters lay in the middle
of the woods. And they had no wings to fly with or beak to peck with if
any owl or a fox came upon them. ‘Ke-ke-ke-ke,’ the magpies laughed in
chorus.
About five o’clock the yellow-hammer woke up. In the softest voice,
scarcely audible, she whispered to her mate, ‘Are you awake?’
He answered with a soft, sleepy ‘Yes, of course, I’m awake.’
At the same time, beside each other, they stuck their small heads out
of the nest.
Such exultation as sprang from their throats when they saw how spring
and summer were coming.
‘See-see,’ said she. ‘See-see, I was right. No famine this year. We can
hurry with the nest.’
‘And begin to think of young ones,’ twittered he.
And jubilation broke forth again from them, and from other small birds
that had just come north to look around.
‘Nowhere in the world is it like this,’ they sang. ‘See the sun
over the mountain. Soon it will stay all night. The woods are big.
Already we can stay here as we did last year. We were cold then, we
starved then. But it was nice to have a nest. We’ll take it again,
we’ll take it again. Sun and spring. No famine. Sun and spring!’ In
different languages and in different melodies it rang out from small
throats--‘Sun and spring!’ ‘Nest and young ones!’ Far, far out in the
woods it could be heard.
The children lay still and listened. They heard the black cock calling,
and knew well how funny he looked when, to the calling, he danced
around, around.
And just now, just as the sun rose, the wood-grouse began his call, his
mysterious whispering, his queer sucking noise with the final shriek of
joy: the joy of living and having a gentle little mate to sing to.
A strong odor of resin and moist pine needles, of newly bared earth
here and there, forced its way under the fir on the newly wakened south
wind.
The children stuck their noses up over the cover. They drank in the air
and felt the same desire the birds had to fly up, to chirp and sing.
They heard the brook; already freed, it purled near them, that, too, in
a twittering exultation.
They sat up in bed: at the same time the desire to sing seized them.
Maglena started:
‘Morning between the mountains,
Running brook and flood
Springing up like fountains,
Sighing God is good, God is good.
‘Now I see day breaking,
Light comes through the wood,
Valleys now are waking,
Sighing God is good, God is good.
‘The forest birds are singing
In a happy mood,
As on a branch they’re swinging,
Chirping God is good, God is good.
‘Soul, wake up and cry
In a happy mood,
Raise a song on high,
Sing that God is good, God is good.’
‘Oh, but it’s nice and wonderful and fun to have a house and church in
the woods!’ said Maglena. She sprang up when they had finished the song.
‘Now we’re going to clean ourselves and clean up the house,’ she sang
to her own melody. ‘I’ll wash me and I’ll wash you, and I’ll comb me
and I’ll comb you.’
Maglena danced a little schottische up to Magnus, who sat in bed and
scratched his head with both hands. His face was rather spotted, for it
was black with smoke from the fire, and, besides, in his sleep he had
rubbed his eyes with hands that were not especially clean.
‘That isn’t any nice song,’ muttered Magnus, who was at once out of
humor. ‘Wash yourself, you. Your nose is as black as the old hen at
Sven Paul’s.’
‘But you are as spotted as the black-and-white goat at Karl Nilsson’s.
What do you think Anna-Lisa would say? I think Per-Erik looks different
from you now all right.’
‘Just as if it were any fun to take after the way he looks now. Go
’way, I’m going down to the brook after water.’
‘But first, Magnus, you’ve got to have a clean face and hands, whether
you want to or not.’
Maglena took fast hold of the wriggling boy’s arm.
‘I suppose you think you’ll work me into the little shirt I got last
week, or let me go around naked like Cain in the picture at Karl
Nilsson’s. Let me go, do you hear?’
Magnus sputtered and fought like a lynx, ready to protect his skin to
the utmost.
‘Andy, hold the boy for me!’ panted Maglena. ‘He hasn’t been washed for
three days. I thought of it to-night that I really had to try to get
him washed and combed, now that he hasn’t got Anna-Lisa.’
She freed one hand and scratched her head carefully and unconsciously.
Andy put down the armful of branches he had carried in, and came to
Maglena’s aid.
‘You ought to be ashamed to look worse than a pig.’
‘But you don’t scrape pigs clean with snow-crust, either, and that’s
what Maglena was going to do to me, she doesn’t know any better,’
cried Magnus.
Big tears made clean paths down his cheeks that were quite rosy, giving
an example of how they would look when really washed.
‘Go down to the brook after water in this bowl so we can wash you
clean, if you don’t wash yourself,’ said Andy mediatingly.
Magnus tore himself furiously from Maglena’s hold. Swift as lightning
he put out his tongue at her; and disappeared toward the brook, quick
as an eel.
Without doubt, Maglena looked more disappointed than pleased when he,
after a while, came back ‘in,’ his face shining and clean, dripping
with water.
‘Give me a rag,’ he puffed pompously, ‘so I can rub my face. I washed
myself in the brook.’
Maglena, who during his absence had called forth the courage and
strength of a lioness for a regular ‘house-cleaning’ of her brother,
tore the sleeve violently out of father’s old shirt and gave it to him.
‘What in the world are you scratching me for?’ cried Magnus angrily
when Maglena could not resist running the rag around the boy’s neck and
ears a few times.
‘I suppose you have eyes in the back of your head so you can see that
your neck is black.’
‘Gracious, girl, then I’ll have to help you too, when you’re going to
wash, ’cause, as far as I can see, you don’t have eyes in the back of
your head either.’
Maglena drew back, defeated by her brother’s argument. It was rather a
come-down to her mother and mistress dignity to have to yield.
But her good humor soon returned.
She dropped the sheepskin she had been folding on the moss, and went
with quick steps to the knapsack which she lifted off the knot in the
tree. Out of it she finally fished the brass comb. With a triumphant
air she turned toward Magnus with the comb in her hand.
But he was at this moment inaccessible, strong, superior, properly
washed for the first time without help. Clean hands, dried with a rag!
‘Girl, go down to the brook and rub the black off your nose. Now _you_
look like the pig at Karl Nilsson’s.’
But now Andy had to laugh, and when Andy laughed heartily like that,
the others had to laugh too.
‘Bring the comb here,’ said Magnus, who first became serious. His
expression was wildly resolute, and he took the comb as if it had been
the spear with which he had been condemned to kill himself.
‘If I’m good enough to wash myself, then I guess I can manage to comb
myself too, even if it has to be as often as once or twice a week.’
Maglena, who had given her brother the comb with a distrustful
provoking sniff, soon came back from the brook just as shiningly clean
as Magnus.
He sat sternly attentive before the fire, with his hair dripping wet,
straining like small candle flames toward his neck.
Beyond a doubt, he was combed, for his scalp shone red where his hair
was parted. Magnus was cold, and his teeth chattered, but his blue
lips did not want to confess how little pleasant he found life in this
self-cleaning process.
‘I believe you’re cold,’ said Maglena, who looked at Magnus through the
curly hair that she parted and pulled and jerked at to get clean and,
if possible, smooth.
‘Am I cold! Well, I guess I am cold! Look if there’s ice down the back
of my waist.’
Magnus sat absolutely still, as if he himself had frozen into an ice
statue and so had lost all power to move.
Maglena felt a little remorse. She twisted her hair hastily around a
comb of wire with a brass edge which she fastened high at the back of
her head. Then she tied the woolen scarf on again and began quickly
with the morning chores. First ‘barn chores,’ of course, to get milk
for the boys and the household. She had to see to the cattle, scrape
and brush them. ‘The old folks’ suddenly became a whole big herd of
cattle.
The mistress got breakfast for the ‘men.’ She nearly pushed the
‘farmhand’ Magnus into the fire in the struggle to get him to sit near
it and the heat. He, who knew he was a servant, wanted to give the
master the place at the ‘head’ of the table.
While they ate, Maglena, like a real mistress, stood at the fire and
knitted mittens. _After_ the men, it would be her turn to get her share
of the milk and bits of bread and crusts she had saved in the knapsack.
Andy put wood on the fire and sent his ‘man’ to the woods with the
sled. To-day he was to get wood for the household, and he felt the
importance of being both horse and servant.
Maglena had made the bed, swept the floor with a bundle of birch twigs,
washed the dishes, and shaken the bedclothes. As mistress she now sat
by the fire on a folded robe, and mended the master’s trousers, while
the master himself crouched in the other robe and patiently waited for
the garment that is rather necessary to a master.
In the meantime, she asked him questions out of the catechism, which of
course they carried with them.
‘What is the value of industry?’
‘Industry promotes good health and prosperity, and prevents many
opportunities for sin.--But, goodness, that isn’t so particular. Only
get that piece in the back on right,’ continued Andy in the same breath.
‘Well, you can’t go around with a fringe at the bottom, can you, now
that you’re a rich farmer,’ objected Maglena reproachfully.--‘What is
meant thereby, that God hears our prayers?’ she asked in the same
admonishing tone.
‘That He, in His wisdom and goodness gives us either what we ask or
what is better for us.--It’s getting almost cold, sitting like this,’
said Andy and tried to make the worn robe cover his whole body.
‘Well, you’ll have to take them then; the patch is finished, but I’ll
have to fix the bottom better to-night after you’ve gone to bed. If I
only knew how we could stay in this nice house!’ she continued.
‘It’s going to get warm,’ remarked Andy. ‘It looked like it around the
moon last night, and then it will be awfully hard for us to get away
from here in the slush; there won’t be any crust.’
‘If we only had something to eat, we’d be comfortable here in our own
house.’
‘But we haven’t anything to eat.’
‘If it only were summer,’ continued Maglena.
‘But it isn’t summer yet,’ answered Andy with a gloomy expression.
‘I guess there is no other way than for us to start out again,’ he
finished with a sigh.
‘There ought to be some way, when it’s so nice here.’
Maglena tore the other sleeve out of father’s old shirt briskly. She
meant to sew the arm holes together and make a sort of cape.
‘The best way would be for you to take our money, the three twenty-five
öre pieces, and go out now on the crust. Near here is a clearing
that has just been burnt, and then there must be people that own it
where you can find out where the store is that little Anna at the
wedding-farm talked about.’
Andy’s face cleared.
‘Yes, and I have wooden spoons and things to trade, and then all the
twenty-five öre pieces to buy food. If I find the store I can get food
and we can stay here until you get us all mended up.’
‘And you’ll have time to make a lot of spoons and things to sell. If it
only were time for the birch leaves to come out, we could make brooms
too and carry them on the sled.’
‘When it’s time to make birch brooms, then there won’t be any
sleighing,’ remarked Andy with a little laugh.
He was pleased because the trousers were whole once more, and because
he knew the catechism lesson he had set out to learn, but mostly
because of the thought that they could stay on under the tree and not
have to go around in the settlements begging food and beds.
‘Then I’ll be off,’ he said.
Maglena rubbed his old fur cap in the snow, and scraped his coat with
lumps of snow-crust. She thought he looked really fine and rich when he
turned to her to say good-bye before he lifted the door-branches and
went out.
‘Lucky meeting, horse and man,’ he smiled at Magnus, who was coming
with a load of resinous gnarled pine roots.
‘Whoa, stop, Blackie,’ said Magnus to himself. ‘It’s a fine load, isn’t
it? I thought I’d pile up the wood here south of the house where the
sun can shine on it and dry it.’
Magnus pointed out the spot he had in mind.
‘That will be fine. It’s a good thing I have such a good man on the
farm. Now I’m going to the mill so we’ll have bread, and I’ll have to
get some potatoes to plant too.’
‘Oh, dear, we haven’t any potatoes in the house either,’ called Maglena
from indoors.
‘But we haven’t a kettle to cook them in,’ answered Andy with his head
in the door.
‘I’ll roast them in the ashes for dinner, and fry the herring on the
coals, ’cause, of course, you’ll bring home herring too.’ The mistress
came out. She stood with her hands under her apron and chatted with the
master and servant.
‘If you find anything good for spoons or anything, bring it along,’
said the master. ‘Good-bye, then,’ he added and set off, half-running
in the shade between the trees where the crust still bore, though it
had begun to get so warm that the mistress had to shield her eyes from
the sun with her hand. She went in again, but called to the servant,
‘Come in and you’ll see something beautiful.’
Magnus was heard putting the horse in the stable before he came slowly
in.
‘What is it?’
‘See the sun in all the drops in the ceiling here. See how it shines
red and all colors on the branches and twigs. It can’t be as beautiful
as that even at the king’s.’
‘No-o, it is beautiful,’ admitted Magnus, ‘and nice and warm here by
the fire.’
He stood and warmed himself, much pleased.
Golden Horn too liked the fire. She lay on the robe beside Maglena, who
leaned against her.
On another corner of the robe lay the cat on softly folded front paws,
and stared into the fire. She purred loudly if Maglena only turned
toward her.
‘You can stay in and rest awhile now, Magnus.’
‘I guess I will,’ agreed Magnus with dignity. He tried to squeeze in on
the robe where Golden Horn lay, chewing her cud.
‘Move over, Golden Horn, you have more on than I have,’ he puffed,
and at last managed to get a passable corner between the goat and his
sister.
‘Now I thought we’d go through the Ten Commandments, ’cause to-morrow
we’re going to have a catechism party,’ said Maglena in rather a
coaxing voice.
She began to realize that it was best to treat Magnus with gentleness.
It worried both her and Andy that the little brother should be untaught
all winter.
‘I am sure I know them,’ assured Magnus confidently.
‘No use saying that,’ said Maglena indignantly. ‘Tell me at once the
second commandment.’
‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord
will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain.’
The answer came fluently; Maglena was obviously astonished. But she
thought to snare him with the eighth commandment that had always
troubled her.
‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’
Magnus’s eyes shone triumphantly.
‘Now the rooster will have to crow for you[13] when Andy comes back,’
praised Maglena.
[13] In Swedish A B C books, there is a picture of a rooster on the
last page, and when a child has learned its lesson well, the
rooster is said to crow, and certain it is that some reward is
found between the pages afterwards, like a piece of candy or a
cooky.
Magnus swelled with pleasure.
‘Well, you see, the catechism isn’t anything so awful for me,’ he said
without any great humility. ‘I think it isn’t so easy for you,’ he
added with a superior air.
Maglena felt a little guilty. But it did not occur to her to admit any
inferiority in any respect.
‘How is it with the psalms?’ she went on with dignified seriousness,
while she, with obvious trouble, began knitting the thumb of the
mitten. ‘This one: “All the world praises the Lord.”’
‘I can’t do that,’ muttered Magnus. ‘When every other word falls like
that and they follow each other so that they fall apart if a single
word gets away, then I can’t remember them.’
‘But we’re going to sing that to-morrow at the catechism party, and
Andy will be the minister, and we don’t want to be ashamed of one. Read
it aloud twenty times, and then you’ll know it.’
Magnus really meant to follow Maglena’s advice. It was so pleasant to
sit here by the fire and look up at the sun-bright drops on the walls
and ceiling, and have before you a catechism party with ash-roasted
potatoes and coal-fried herring.
He laid a few thick roots on the fire that flamed up brightly and
warmed them. Then he sat down on the robe with his elbows on his knees,
his hands under his cheeks, and the book on the ground before him.
‘All the world praises the Lord,’ he read the verse aloud over and over
again.
The cat purred and purred.
Golden Horn chewed her cud.
Maglena straightened out the bright yarn. She thought to refresh
herself by sewing roses on the nearly finished mitten.
The sun shone on the moss floor.
Roundabout the ‘house’ little birds were heard twittering and rustling
in the trees.
Maglena sat and thought how nice everything was. Nothing could be so
joyful as having their own green cottage in the woods.
Andy would certainly find his way back, too, even if it should be late
in the evening when he came.
Just then both she and Magnus heard running steps, panting breaths from
one who came rushing toward the tree as if pursued.
Right through the wall without looking for the door came Andy. So
exhausted was he that he could not say a word, but threw himself full
length on the ground. He was pale, his hair was wet with perspiration.
It took awhile before he was able to move or say a word.
CHAPTER XXII
DRIVEN AWAY
Andy stood up hurriedly.
‘Get together everything we have and put it in the knapsack! Hurry as
if there were a fire!’ he panted, still gasping for breath.
‘What in the world, boy!’ said Maglena. Her eyes darkened with fear
and her lips trembled. But quickly and carefully she packed into the
knapsack everything that she had taken out to make it homelike under
the tree.
‘Do we have to go away from here, anyway?’ she whispered, and looked
about her terrified.
‘Yes, right away,’ said Andy, in a hoarse, muffled voice. Swiftly he
bound fast the robes, knapsack, and wood for his carving on the sled.
Silently, with clenched teeth, he took the rope over his shoulder again
and set out through the right door.
Maglena followed, pushing the sled. She could not look back into the
fine cozy cottage where she had felt that at last she had a home, the
first since they had left the little gray house. Golden Horn followed,
of course, close at their heels, like a dog.
‘Take the cat, Magnus,’ said Andy curtly. ‘They expect to get her, too,
as well as us.’
A heavy, bitter spirit weighed him down. It was hard walking, since the
sun had softened the crust and the snow was like water, so Andy sought
banks, knolls, and gutters, where the earth was practically bare, and
where too the sled left almost no tracks.
‘It is the man from the Wicked Farm, you know, that is after us,’ he
said at length when they had gone so far that not a glimpse could be
seen of the tall, thick-branched fir where they had lived.
Maglena had known the whole time that they were fleeing from these
people. She shuddered so that she shook when she thought of the night
in the shed in the moonlight when they heard Golden Horn’s awful
bleating, and saw her lying there as if dead.
Not until they had come so far that they had another village in sight
did the fugitives dare rest. They had no longer the strength to plod
through the soft, uneven snow slush.
Magnus was so tired he cried. He had dropped the cat long ago. With
tail straight in the air, and mewing, she followed the children as long
as possible, but when she came upon the hole of a field mouse under a
stump, she stopped. They knew she was so hungry she had to stop. How
would they dare to go to the village for food themselves?
‘We’ll have to drink milk awhile,’ said Maglena. ‘I have two or three
pieces of bread in the knapsack. Before we go to people----’
‘If we could only get down to the river and across to the other side
where you see that big village, we’d be away from this direction,’
brooded Andy.
‘There is water on the ice in the river, but I suppose we can find some
place to get over on good ice,’ said Maglena eagerly.
‘Poor Golden Horn,’ said she and petted the goat. ‘It’s hard for you
out here in the wilderness. But before we go over the river we’ll find
some little birch grove or little willows so you can get something to
eat.’
Golden Horn did not complain. She did not like the villages either. So
she tripped lightly before them up a winding path that led from the
edge of the village to the river. Andy guided the sled. Here on the
shady bank there was still sound ice.
Magnus sat on the sled contentedly, and Maglena ran behind so fast that
her shoes flew like drumsticks.
Planks had been thrown out on the ice and now floated in the slush over
the black ice near the shore. But Andy stopped. They had come to a
pretty grove of juniper bushes and Golden Horn must have her dinner.
It was well protected and hidden here under the steep bank. Here Andy
could tell them about the dangers he had helped them escape.
Now they heard how he had run and jumped between the tree-trunks happy
in the thought of coming home to the ‘cottage’ with food. He had gone
far past the clearing, but guided himself by the sun so that he had
gone away from where the Wicked Farm was.
He had been much pleased when he had heard voices. There were some
woodcutters talking loudly between the trees. They were having fun over
something, Andy heard as he hurried toward them.
But then he heard, ‘I’ll teach them that and more too. The boy that
tripped me up will get all he can stand.’ It was the Finnish farmhand
from the Wicked Farm speaking.
The other had laughed at the youngsters who had dared oppose grown
folk. Andy had scarcely had time to crouch down behind a pile of
branches and brush, from which he could see the men, before the
cross-eyed Finn turned directly toward where he had crept down.
‘They’re somewhere in these woods,’ he laughed evilly. ‘It isn’t hard
to see that because there is blood from the goat a couple of places on
the road, where the tracks of the sled went in on the clearing where
the crust still bore this morning.’
‘In this weather they can’t get far with a heavy sled and a goat that
must still have trouble walking,’ the other man had answered, he too
with an evil laugh.
‘The goat got as much as he could stand, I guess,’ grinned the Finn.
And then both of them had laughed so hard that the little birds had
become frightened and flown away.
‘Knife, the gray dog at the farm, is just as ill-natured and
bad-tempered as the people there,’ grinned the Finn again. ‘He’ll hunt
out those youngsters all right, and bite their legs before they have
time to open their mouths.’
‘And you lay there and listened?’ whispered Maglena, eyes wide with
terror. She stood and held down a branch of swelling buds for Golden
Horn.
‘I couldn’t move. The Finn stood there and stared right at the
brush-pile where I was as if he suspected something. I didn’t dare
breathe even because I thought he saw me when I hid there.’
‘Boy, that you didn’t die of fright!’
‘You don’t die like that,’ thought Magnus. He still sat on the sled
with his legs drawn up, so exhausted that he was scarcely able to
follow Andy’s story of the dangers they had escaped. ‘If I didn’t
die when the cat came on the ice with fire in her eyes and her tail
like smoke so that I thought it was ghosts, then no one else will die
either.’
With this assurance, Magnus sank back into apathy.
‘Yes, I was scared,’ admitted Andy. ‘I wondered what would happen to
you and Golden Horn, and what would become of me if the men that stood
there grinning so wickedly had seen me.
‘“They can’t be far away,” said the Finn, and took a couple of steps
toward my brush-pile. “Maybe they’re hiding here, ’cause I thought I
just saw something move behind this brush.”
‘He picked up a stone and threw it into the pile so that it nearly took
my head off.’
‘And you didn’t scream or move?’ Maglena’s voice was thick with fright.
‘No, ’cause that would have been the end of both you and me and Golden
Horn. But the Finn climbed on a couple steps more.’
‘Boy, I can’t bear to hear it!’
‘But then, you know, there came a whole lot of little lemmings[14]
along the ground, black and gold and those that look like a long rag
carpet, that flew around his feet. He stepped on them to kill them and
jumped high in the air, he was so mad, and then he looked away from me.’
[14] Lemmings are a sort of Arctic wandering mice.
‘That’s queer. They came as if sent. We haven’t seen any mountain
lemmings yet, since we have been in the woods,’ mused Maglena. ‘Mother
sent them, that’s what I believe. But then you ran?’
‘No-o. I couldn’t. The Finn went back to the other man, and now he said
that I had _stolen_ the watch and the robe from grandfather.’
‘_You stole--took without leave!_’
Maglena let go the branch. Her eyes burned black with indignation.
‘Ye-e-s, he said that.’
Andy’s face was sad and miserable. ‘It hurt me like something sharp,
you see.’
‘Well, then I am ashamed to go out where there are people. “Stole,”
just like Jan Ers Karl that stole from a store-keeper and was put in
jail in town.’
Maglena’s lips began to tremble, the tears came in a rush.
‘Girl, you ought to know that I wouldn’t do that!’
‘But it is awful that any one has even said so. Mother would have died
if she’d heard it.’
‘I guess mother can see what is right where she is now, so I don’t
worry about that. I’m more worried about grandfather, at the Wicked
Farm.’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, you know, Maglena, that the Finn said that when Brita came in to
grandfather in the morning to make a fire, he had had a stroke.’
‘So he could not tell them that he had _given_ you the watch and robe.’
‘The poor thing had had a stroke and couldn’t move out of his bed,’
repeated Andy patiently. ‘Father and mother and the little boys had
come rushing down to the grandfather. They had seen that the watch and
robe were gone. Grandfather had been able to say that I had got them
from him. The men aped what he said. They stuttered like grandfather.
“The b-b-boy h-has the w-watch and the r-robe. G-Grels sh-sh-shan’t
h-have them.”’
‘Grandfather was a nice man, and good. But I suppose they were mad at
him?’
‘They were that. The mother had shaken him and said he _must_ take out
the watch, and Grels had been so mad he had cried and said all sorts of
things to grandfather.’
‘Oh, and there he was alone. No one to turn to,’ said Maglena with the
tenderest sympathy in her voice.
‘Yes, he found Some One to turn to, because, you see, he died last
night.’
‘Then he is just as well off as mother,’ said Maglena, relieved.
‘But Grels wants the watch and the mistress the robe.’
‘And the Finn wants to beat you,’ continued Maglena, who looked up the
bank shudderingly. ‘But we ought to get away from here.’
‘They weren’t going to start to hunt us until this afternoon after they
came home with the wood. But then Grels and the other children were
going to be along. And Knife was going to track us.’
‘Boy, we must get over the river right away. The dog will lose the
scent when we go over the water and drag the planks after us.’
They worked hurriedly over the sled. Maglena suddenly stopped her work
of binding fast the knapsack.
She seized Andy’s arm.
‘Boy! Do you hear? Now they are after us, anyway, both the Firm and the
children and Knife. Listen, they are almost here! They’ll come down the
bank--now they are behind that cliff----’
Andy stood as stiff as a statue. He, too, heard plainly angry yelps
that came rapidly nearer through the bushes that bordered the bank.
Behind a steep wall that shot out from the bank urgent cries were heard
in boys’ and men’s voices.
Now the branches just beside them rustled and cracked. Maglena and
Magnus, who had just dragged himself up, threw themselves forward
screaming, on the sled.
Andy held Golden Horn behind him by one horn.
He stood still with a bitter, utterly discouraged expression on his
face.
The children--Golden Horn--Again he remembered that it was he himself
who had led them into this danger, this wickedness that now threatened.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
It was the head, the horns of a _reindeer_ that now appeared before
Andy’s frightened eyes: a reindeer that flew past him with beating
hoofs and big black frightened eyes and continued toward the river’s
edge.
A Lapp dog was in pursuit, tight at his heels. They plunged by without
taking any notice of the children beside the sled. Of such little
creatures the deer, and much less the dog, had no fear.
With a hallooing cry came a Lapp from the birch grove and ran quickly
forward on broad short skiis. A Lapp boy followed in his trail.
Andy did not believe his eyes.
‘_Mattes Klip!_’
It was a Lapp from their own home tract in the mountains, one who had a
tent only sixty miles above their own parish.
The Lapp gave a cry.
‘Isn’t it Andy from High Peak village in the mountains? And, God help
us, little ones even thinner than Lapp’s children. Food scarce for
mountain children this year!’
‘Mattes! Oh, that it is _Mattes_!’
Maglena, who still trembled in every limb, went toward the Lapp.
Magnus hardly dared lift his head from the sled.
This time he really believed that fright had been the death of him, for
he could not move from the spot. Besides, the thought still held him
that the hallooing came from the farmhand and the Wicked Farm boys, and
the barking from Knife.
Magnus could not all at once turn all these ideas upside down or
downside up. He had to have time to straighten it all out within him.
So he stayed where he was, scraping the small of his leg against the
edge of the sled and standing almost on his head in the sheepskin robe.
It was only when a smart blow descended on that part of his body that
he all too carelessly exposed that he tumbled backwards and stood on
the ground.
‘Little fellow scared out of his wits, big man otherwise up in the
mountains,’ said Mattes.
‘This time they nearly did for me. It isn’t any fun to think that
you’re going to be bitten to death by a dog.’
Mattes had taken on a sorrowful look, but his happy even Lapp temper
soon came forth again.
‘Good luck now that reindeer got of herd this morning. Been mad and run
after it in snow-water all day. Satisfied now with running deer. Nerlja
glad to stop too. Give food to you all.’
The Lapp took forth out of ‘the Lapp’s cupboard’ (the full jacket above
the belt) a piece of reindeer cheese and hard bread, which Nerlja, his
son, as well as the others, hungrily accepted.
‘Not far from herd now. Deer there now. To-night Swedish children will
be little Lapps in tent with old Lapp.’
‘Oh, goodness, Mattes, let’s go!’ cried Maglena eagerly and pulled
Mattes’s sleeve. ‘I hear a gray dog up on the bank; he’s whining and
hunting a trail. I hear the boys hallooing too.’
Maglena pulled Mattes down to the ice.
Little Nerlja watched how Andy fussed over the sled. He thought that
Swedish people had a lot of trouble when they were wandering; no
‘akkja’ [15] in which one could tie fast everything one wanted along
and no deer to pull one through the miles of wilderness.
[15] Akkja is the Lappish word for a sort of sled drawn by reindeer,
shaped like a boat, without runners of any kind, lined with furs
and large enough for one person only.
Their clothes were worst of all, especially their shoes.
Andy and Magnus had grown-ups’ shoes, soaking wet, and stuffed with
hay. Their long trousers with patches, and their long-sleeved jackets
without belts were uncomfortable wearisome things. A Lapp neither would
nor could move about in such clothes.
Little Nerlja hopped and jumped, lithe as a pine-marten in his short
deerskin kilts with the close-fitting trousers bound at the small
of the leg with bright bands and tassels. On his feet he had the
feather-weight Laplanders’ fur boots.
The blue pointed cap with the green stripe sat as lightly as a mere
nothing on his head. The Lapp boy laid his skiis and ski-staff on the
sled and took hold of the rope to help Andy pull.
The Lapp was much amused at their undaunted act of taking a goat with
them on such a journey. A goat was nearly as easily fed and cared for
as a deer. She came running from the bushes when Maglena called her,
full-fed and content.
Maglena nearly fell, for she could not help looking back in the
direction from which she heard clearly the barking of dogs and
hallooing. When they came out to the middle of the wide river, she
could see the village they had passed. Up there she saw the fields with
bare spots, slopes, and ditches. She could see the dark woods where
their green cottage was. And she hid herself shivering behind Mattes.
There, just where the road turned toward the river, she saw a gray
dog dash forward, whining and growling. Farther up on the river-bank
appeared two heavy men and three boys, also a girl. Like hungry wolves
they greedily hunted their prey.
Maglena took tighter hold of Mattes’s coat. Magnus held on no less
tightly.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LAPLANDER’S HUT
Before them, where the road led up the northern river-bank, already
clear of snow, there was apparently a forest of dry gray branches. A
forest that moved slowly forward.
Lapp-Mattes gave an echoing cry: a strange, penetrating shriek as if
from the throat and the palate together. One who had never heard such
a sound before would have thought that Mattes yelled forth sounds and
words without meaning.
But the Barren Moor children knew so much of the Lapps’ ways as to
understand that Mattes now, in a song made up on the spur of the
moment, greeted his wife, children, and helpers. Then he told about the
children so that those in the tent knew of their fate long before they
had reached the herd.
‘Deer ran all day,’ sang Mattes. ‘Find little Swedish children beside
frozen water; afraid of Lapp; glad when they see it is Mattes from Bear
Mountain. They share Lapp’s food, lie in Lapp’s tent. They are alone,
no father, no mother.’
Little Nerlja strapped on his skiis as soon as he saw the forest of
horns. Swift as an arrow, like a hunted sea-fowl, he flew over the ice.
Those following soon heard the barking of the watchdogs, as they ran
about the herd, composed of nearly a thousand deer, to gather them
together for the night.
The Lapps were going to put up their tents beside the river, on this
side of the big village the children had seen from the other bank. It
was hard work for both dogs and Lapps to get the often unruly animals
up through the narrow pass from the river to the plain.
Mattes bore off on his skiis to help.
Magnus, Maglena, yes, even Andy, walked as if asleep, dragging their
feet after them. They scarcely rallied when a little one-year-old
Mattes met them on the road, tumbling about in the snow as naked as
when he was born.
Sigri, his little sister, had much difficulty in capturing him and
getting him into the tent.
The Lapp mother, Cecilia, was more sure of herself. She took the
kicking boy, stuffed him into the ‘klubb’ (a long cradle of skin which
can be carried on the back), into the fine deerskin bed which lined it,
and bound the soft cover of skin fast about his waist and little body,
wriggling with life and mischief.
The mother hung up the cradle by means of leather bands to a slender
tree-trunk which was fastened to the ceiling. Sigri rocked the cradle
and sang the Lapps’ wild, deafening cradle-song to little Mattes, who
became quiet, listened, and fell asleep.
The poor, tired little wanderers threw themselves down on the
deerskins that lay like a carpet around the fire in the middle of the
tent. They were awakened to drink the strong coffee which was given
them.
Neither coffee nor anything else could open Magnus’s eyes. But it was
remarkable how wide awake Andy and Maglena became after the coffee.
They suddenly felt hunger, and how unbelievably good the reindeer meat
tasted with the coarse bread. Even the strong black soup of deer’s
blood tasted good. But the reindeer milk which was offered them in a
beautiful carved bowl, made of one single piece of wood, they refused
with thanks. It is strong and bitter for those who are not used to it.
To them, goats’ milk tasted much better.
Golden Horn, whose rich supply of milk was offered to the Lapp
household, climbed neatly over the skins and lay down comfortably on
the farthest tent-skin. Magnus still slept like a boy of stone. And
yet there was the worst kind of clamor outside of the tent. The Lapps
yelled and hallooed when they threw the lasso over the horns of the
reindeer cows that were to be milked. The cows resisted with all four
feet braced in the snow slush and bare tussocks, but were pulled out in
spite of themselves and held by the Lapps while the girls milked into
small wooden bowls.
The cows and calves stared wonderingly at Andy and Maglena, who, hand
in hand with Sigri, wandered about in the huge herd.
The Lapps walked safely among the reindeer bulls, who fought and
charged each other with horns which finally became entangled, and among
the lassoes which flew about their ears.
The ever-watchful Lapp dogs would suddenly see a deer who, unnoticed,
wanted to get away to better pasture, and would dart after him straight
through the herd. Then one had to keep out of the way if one did not
want to be knocked down.
The strange, soft, yet wild, language sounded on all sides. The Lapps
chattered, they pointed at the herd with vehement gestures, they yelled
in order to make themselves heard. The reindeer bulls were to be
captured and tamed for draught oxen. Little calves on wobbly legs must
be looked after. Animals must be selected for slaughter.
The women talked caressingly, half singing, to the cows they milked; or
they sat on their heels with a new little calf, soft as silk, on their
knees. They fondled and caressed it, while the reindeer mother stood
beside them and looked on with tenderness in the big moist black eyes.
Andy and Maglena became dizzy. They became part of the life, the funny
sounds, the somehow gay bustle.
The forest of horns thinned. One pair of branches after the other sank
down in the standing herd. More and more disappeared. Soon the whole
herd was at rest for the night.
The Lapp dogs, who had been fed in the tent, slept there in the
warmth, as Lapp dogs always sleep, with closed eyes, but with ears
alert for the least sign of a wolf.
Mattes came into the tent with his elder sons and a servant. Cecilia
had food and coffee ready for them. The women-folk of the family and
the maids followed soon after, hungry and tired; but not so tired that
they could not keep up a jolly clamor in the tent.
The men smoked short clay pipes; the older women too. They drank strong
black coffee and told stories of their adventures: about the old wolf
that no one could shoot; that was enchanted and that therefore neither
shot nor spear could wound.
And they talked in whispers about what Mattes had ‘seen’ when he stood
at the sacrificial stone on midsummer night. He had seen everything
that was to happen in the country in the next year. He could foretell
peace, war, or pestilence, a good year or a poor. He had followed the
angel of death in his Vision. If he ‘wished,’ Mattes could say whether
the angel of death would take more old or more young people during the
next year.
All this talk in the Lapp language Sigri translated for Andy and
Maglena. She probably added a little too, and saw to it that it all
became a little more uncanny.
Here among the Lapps one heard nothing of brownies and fairies. But
about goblins and bewitched Swedes who had to obey and follow a Lapp
because they had been insolent to him; and about goblin drums and
‘sacrifice’ and dangers up in the deserted mountain country, with
‘death’ who shrieked and wailed out on the marshes all night long.
Strange that a person can grow sleepy during such talk. But they who
were sleepy were Andy and Maglena. They had thrown off wet shoes and
outer clothes, and now they curled up on the skin beside Sigri and
little Lisa.
Outside slept the herd of deer. Thousands of lives and yet a soundless
quiet. Over it all shone spring’s gently smiling heaven of stars, just
as it had shone over the homeless children’s green cottage in the woods
the night before.
CHAPTER XXV
AGAIN DEPENDENT ON THEMSELVES
Days and weeks had gone since that morning in the spring when the
children from Barren Moor had parted from their old friends, the Lapp
Mattes Klip and his family. Before then, both Andy, Maglena, and
Magnus had thrown lassoes, milked reindeer, and helped pack tents and
household goods and food into long rows of waiting akkjas.
Andy had even had a ride after a reindeer that was great fun, but came
near being dangerous. He was given permission to creep into an akkja. A
supposedly gentle deer was harnessed to it, and Mattes himself handed
him the rein, which was made of deerskin. And then he was told how to
manage the deer and how to use the rein, casting it to the right or to
the left over the deer’s horns, depending on the direction in which he
wanted to go where there was the best snow. He was even told what to do
if the deer became unmanageable.
So Andy had flown across the crusted snow between high firs that shone
golden and violet in the morning sun which was just forcing its way
into the woods.
‘Hi! Hi!’ Such fun! Even the eagle that flew so high above the woods
could not have flown faster.
Andy was in the highest spirits. It seemed to him that he flew like
the eagle; that he glided through the woods swift as an arrow, like a
salmon through clear water; that he raced for miles like a colt. The
deer knew how to find a road between the trees where there was no road.
But then, in a clearing, he wanted to turn back, and this attempt Andy
most decidedly opposed with a jerk at the rein and threatening cries.
‘Ho! Ho! You! Keep on!’
Andy threw the rein to the right of the horn and to the left of the
horn, pulled and tore. He had never had such fun.
‘Will you go, you cloven-hoof!’ shrieked Andy, and overbearingly used
abusive words to the mountain reindeer, he who was only a forest and
stream Swede-boy.
So the deer became furious. Unexpectedly, swift as lightning, he turned
toward the akkja to attack with horns and front legs the scamp of a boy
who had called him ‘cloven-hoof.’
And now it was well that Andy remembered what he had been told about
ungovernable reindeer and that he of habit and necessity had become
resolute and quick in action. Andy did as Mattes had taught him. He
slipped out of the akkja and turned it quickly over him as a protective
roof.
There he lay, what seemed to him a terribly long time, and heard how
the deer beat on the akkja with his hard sharp ‘cloven-hoofs.’ More
than discontented was the deer at not being able, in spite of his
really tiring efforts, to get at the boy who had jerked at the rein so
recklessly, shrieked, ‘Ho! Ho! You!’ and called him ‘cloven-hoof,’ and
who now lay under the wooden akkja that was without a single weak spot.
But he had to save his legs and hoofs to scrape away the crust of snow
later in the day in order to get at the desirable moss that the deer
live on.
Andy raised the akkja on his back and peeped out through the opening.
So that was the way matters stood! The deer had boldly turned about and
stood ready to be off to the camp! Again it was important to be quick.
‘Cloven-hoof’ was apparently ready to be off with the akkja regardless
of whether the Swedish boy was in it or not. Andy had scarcely time to
swing the akkja aright and tumble headlong into it before they were off
again toward the tents and the herd.
Proudly, and with eyes shining with joy, he had come back to the camp
and reaped applause and admiration from the Lapps. The admiration he
accepted with surprising humility. No one but himself knew how truly
cowardly he had felt while he lay under the akkja with the drumming of
the sharp hoofs over him.
When Maglena and Magnus also wanted to be noticed and to win the
applause of the Lapps by a pleasure ride in an akkja, they met Andy’s
resolute opposition. He insisted that it was too dangerous for the
little ones.
‘As if it were hard to ride in an akkja! Sit and hold the reins!
Nonsense!’
Magnus had been quite at home with the Lapps and the reindeer. He had
played with little Mattes, who in the morning was allowed to creep out
of the cradle and who, with the soft deer hairs sticking to his warm
little body, looked like a hairy little goblin.
Magnus was so content among the Lapps that he thought it would be much
pleasanter to go home again with them than to plod along the roads and
run one’s self to death on the ice to escape Wicked Farm people and
dogs. He announced openly that there was nothing to hinder him from
turning back except that both father and mother were away from the
cottage. ‘For you see, Andy,’ Magnus had assured him--and struck one
hand against the other--‘for you see, if only they were there, then I
for my part would turn around and ride home in an akkja after a deer
all the way to Barren Moor, and that you may be sure of.’
Magnus had walked away from Andy, superior, with hands in his trousers
pockets, proud that he could resist such a fine ride home for such a
slight hindrance as the fact that father and mother were not there in
the little gray cottage.
It had been so drearily empty when the children and the Lapps, whom
they had so recently met, went their own way; the children toward the
southeast, toward well-off folk in fruitful parishes; the Lapps in a
bustling journey toward the north, toward the great northern lights,
toward high mountain peaks, toward wide ledges of rock that stood white
with reindeer moss.
Far away, when alone, they neared the large village, they heard the
Lapp-Mattes’s farewell song:
‘Wandering children go far away to see much and learn through black
words in books. Poor Lapp knows nothing, cannot read black words. Lapp
goes to the mountains; learns to understand words of the Great Father,
learns where the herbs grow that cure sick people, learns to find the
way to wolves’ hole, learns to read the stars’ omens. Poor Lapp has
good Father above the mountains, goes there quickly, sings song about
wandering children who made Lapp happy in hut. Wandering children have
gone a dark road, but the light stands over them. Wandering children
also have good Father.’
The children had stood still, listening until not a sound could be
heard from the singing Lapp.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BRIDE
So the children went on toward the more closely settled districts. They
came to farms where order and happiness reigned, where work went with a
vim, and newly woven linen bleached in the sun, stretched on the slopes
near the houses.
Sometimes they also reached places and farms, imposing to look at,
but where drunkenness and laziness had made hard hearts and eyes, and
tongues as sharp as knives.
It was just after spending a night in fear and humiliation at such a
place that they came to a new, strange parish. The white streams whose
rushing had always sounded in their ears as they followed the road
through the valleys were no longer heard.
They had reached the settlements where navigation became possible and
where the big river flowed, navigable, broad, and still. Here restless
life reigned everywhere. The river lay open and free of ice, and
carried with it the yellow timber that was taken care of by the big
sawmills. Ships from native and foreign countries lay anchored out in
the calm water, surrounded by barges filled with newly sawed planks.
It was summer time, with light in the air night and day, light in the
hearts of every one. The work at the saws and on the ships went with a
singing briskness.
The wandering children walked through lumber yards with stacks of
lumber higher than houses, and where it smelled freshly of raw wood.
They stopped beside a row of white-stemmed birches that lined a road
on both sides up to a fine white manor house. A little steamboat, with
a Swedish flag at the stern, lay beside the pier beyond the garden. A
group of well-dressed people came laughing and talking up toward the
birch-lined road that led to the fine house.
Maglena drew back with Golden Horn, terrified. The brothers followed.
There were lots of hiding-places behind the lumber piles. Maglena
realized that they themselves could not now at once follow the same
road that such fine people had taken. She turned, therefore, to a small
house that looked pleasant. It had small windows that laughed like eyes
under a red-tiled roof, just like the forester’s, only this house was
smaller, bright, and yellow in color.
A green fence surrounded the yard, which was large, with a vegetable
garden and a grass plot where white linen lay bleaching. Bushes and
small trees were there too. The children knew now that these were trees
that would bear apples. Though they had never either seen or tasted
apples, they thought it was very wonderful to see such trees as were
found in Paradise itself. Besides, there were flowers and roses of
many kinds. So Andy thought it best to put a muzzle on Golden Horn
before they took her with them through the pretty white gate.
A young woman rose from the vegetable garden south of the house. She
had been weeding. With her raised arm, she shaded her eyes against the
sun while she gazed at the rather unusual group coming in. Her young,
pretty face took on a soft, compassionate look. Her voice sounded sadly
troubled. ‘If these aren’t children from the famine regions, maybe from
the mountains where it has been worst! Poor things, what trouble you
have had and how far you have walked! My dears, come in.’
She stepped out of the garden and hurried toward the house.
‘It is _the bride_--Andy, Magnus--boys. It is _the bride_,’ whispered
Maglena, beside herself with eagerness and joy.
‘Huh,’ muttered Magnus, who was hungry. ‘Have you ever seen a bride
weeding a vegetable garden! Everything down here is upside down, of
course--but not that much!’
‘It is, though, can’t you see it? It is the nice beautiful bride,’
whispered Maglena. More shy than ever, and astonished, but still
delighted, she crept in behind her brothers, who were ashamed of her
stupid notion and were glad to hide her.
They entered a big sunny room that was as fine as the best room at a
wedding, if there had not been an ordinary fireplace and, in front of
the middle window, a brand-new spinning-wheel.
‘The bride,’ Maglena had talked about stood at a white painted
cupboard, eagerly taking out food.
Magnus stood and stared at her head. That surely couldn’t be a bridal
crown that stood up so high under the head covering of red dotted lawn.
It was more likely only braids of hair, twisted about her head and
fastened with a comb.
Magnus’s eyes traveled down the young mistress’s figure for more
reliable signs of a bride.
‘Huh! Cotton blouse and home-woven blue-striped skirt.’
Just then she who was supposed to be the ‘bride’ turned around. She met
Magnus’s brooding, sharply searching gaze. He looked comical, like a
wise little bear cub with his head on one side and the blue eyes fixed
upon her reflectively.
‘What can such a little fellow be thinking of when he looks so
thoughtful?’ she asked, and came smiling toward the children who stood
near the door.
‘Maglena says----’ began Magnus.
‘Be quiet, Magnus,’ warned Andy and pinched his brother’s arm. It was a
signal to be careful in speech and behavior and do everything that one
ought to do in this country that Magnus knew all too well not to obey.
‘What does Maglena say?’ asked the young mistress as she drew Magnus
with her to the table.
‘This little girl doesn’t look to me as if she’d want to say anything
that wasn’t right and good,’ she added kindly.
Maglena stood as red as a rose and with downcast eyes. She wanted to
cry, she felt so ill at ease and ashamed.
Magnus, of course, dared not open his mouth again; he had the greatest
respect for Andy’s pinches.
‘Well, but, children, you ought to tell me what Maglena said.’
Andy stepped forward, even he red to the ears. ‘Maglena always says so
much that is silly and that she makes up, though there isn’t any harm
in it. Now she said that you are--a bride.’
‘No, I didn’t say that, Andy.’ Maglena was angry over her brother’s
misunderstanding of her words, and her overwhelming shyness fell away.
‘I said that she _was the bride_.’
‘I hear you--and now you say it again.’ Andy looked at his sister with
stern reproach and warning.
‘_Was the bride_ up at the Wicked Farm, yes!’
Maglena raised her tearful, shining blue eyes toward the mistress with
a pleading expression.
The young mistress gave a cry.
‘But, children--it’s you that came as wandering children to the wedding
and brought me luck when I was married!’
‘Yes, and that’s what I see and know and say,’ sniffed Maglena,
provoked. ‘And I danced with the bridegroom and got a twenty-five öre
piece.’
‘Oh, but it is nice to see some one from the mountains! I long to be
there so sometimes, especially now in the summer. Before, I always used
to be with the cattle at our dairy farm in the mountains at this time.’
The young mistress smiled and chattered familiarly with the children
while she set out food for them and searched for a few garments to make
over for them.
She laughed with pleasure when she thought of children conceiving of
anything so truly delightful as taking a goat with them on this sort
of a wandering. She must see and talk with Golden Horn, who lay with a
muzzle over her nose out on the step. Goats she knew something about
and wanted to own. But down here at the sawmill there was no one who
owned a goat or even knew much about them, or of how much use and
pleasure the animals were when one took proper care of them.
‘Maybe we will get a goat now, too, when my husband sees this one and
hears how wonderful she is,’ smiled Kristina.
She was so happy, young mistress Kristina, that she took Maglena by
the hands and danced around with her. The little girl must have still
another dance with ‘the bride.’
‘Here is my friend, the very best,’ she sang. Maglena joined in
bravely.
They stopped in the middle of the dance.
The master, the young lumberman, came in. He stopped at the door as
if petrified when he saw his wife, in the middle of the day, romping
around with a youngster, who, into the bargain, was dressed in beggar’s
rags.
‘What in the world, Kristina! What’s happened to you?’
‘Nothing, boy!’ laughed Kristina, rosy and in high spirits after the
dance. ‘But you see, I have fine company here from the mountains, so we
have to have some fun together. Now we’ll go out into the garden and
have coffee there,’ she continued.
Kristina took the coffee-pot, after she had divided the other coffee
things among the children to carry. And they filed out to the bench
that stood under the blossoming mountain ash at the corner of the house
near the vegetable garden.
The man drank coffee and ate homemade bread. His wife did the same,
sitting fresh and happy beside him, and talking in a low tone about the
children.
‘Yes, just think how the poor little things have suffered,’ said the
man. He looked thoughtfully at the children’s clothes, outgrown or
grown-up’s old garments.
‘It’s impossible to talk about it,’ cried his wife eagerly. ‘Without
father and mother, and such awful famine years as they’ve had. And now
they have to go on like this, from door to door, whether people take
them in or drive them out.’
‘I can’t bear to hear it even. It must have been worst for this little
fellow. Such tiny legs he has to walk on. But he’s good at weeding, so
he’ll be a real man in time, anyway.’
The master, laughing with pleasure, looked at Magnus who lay on all
fours in the vegetable garden, pulling up pigweed and red-eye from the
turnip bed, and throwing the weeds in a pile on the path.
‘May I give this to Golden Horn?’ asked Magnus. His face streaked with
clay after wiping away the sweat, he stood in the path in front of the
pile of weeds that were still fresh and green.
‘Have you ever seen any one like him, Kristina?’
‘Yes, he’s a fine boy, though the little ones often seem to be more
forward up there in the mountains where they’re poor. But now they’re
going to have coffee, and as much bread as they can eat, and that’s
certain.’
‘Yes, give your goat the weeds, boy,’ said the master to Magnus. ‘But
do you think she’ll eat such stuff?’ he went on when Magnus came back
with Golden Horn, who was given ‘leave’ of the weeds and, freed of the
muzzle, began to munch them.
‘Golden Horn is satisfied with what she gets,’ assured Magnus. ‘You’ve
never seen such a goat,’ he added with that talkativeness that marked
him when the subject was Golden Horn and he, as now, was beyond Andy’s
reach.
‘Is that so? Is she so wonderful, then?’
‘Golden Horn! You bet she is! She has sense enough for twelve. She eats
whether she likes it or not--the worst trash if she can’t get anything
better, just so she’ll have milk for us.’
Magnus stood musing over Golden Horn’s other excellences. He continued:
‘If she sees that we are tired and hungry, she’ll come to us and say
“Ma-a-a.” “Take some milk,” she means, and when we had the little girls
she could say it to Anna-Lisa many times a day.’
‘And she always has milk to give?’
‘Always, and that’s one thing. And then she’ll rub her nose against
us. “He-he-he,” she says then. She seems to laugh then so that we’ll
be glad, and not give up. Look out, Golden Horn!’ cried Magnus in the
middle of his rapturous description. ‘Don’t go into the garden or I’ll
put the muzzle on you.’
‘That you can bear to torture her like that!’ said the master, a little
mockingly.
‘Yes, I know,’ muttered Magnus. He stared before him. ‘But she doesn’t
mind. She doesn’t want to be better off than we are.’
‘Do you wear a muzzle, then?’
‘No-o, but--how is that now again, Andy?’
Irresolute and confused, Magnus turned to his brother, who, in the
greatest zeal after the lunch, sat bent over in the garden, weeding.
Now he had come near the bench and could hear what the master and
Magnus were talking about.
He looked up at the master as he came toward him.
‘It just seemed, when I thought of putting a muzzle on Golden Horn to
keep her from gnawing and spoiling bushes and grass in the yards, as if
she wouldn’t suffer any more from it than we do.’
‘You talk, too, as if you went around with a muzzle on your nose.’
The lumberman looked wonderingly at the boy who rose and stood soberly
before him.
‘We don’t have a muzzle exactly that shows outside,’ he explained,
embarrassed and blushing. ‘But I thought that it wasn’t any worse for
Golden Horn to walk through pastures and turnip fields with a muzzle
on and not get anything to eat than for--for people that go around and
come in where there is food and maybe don’t get any.’
The older man’s slightly mocking air, with which he had first listened,
changed to a thoughtful, serious look.
Andy was afraid that the lumberman was angry at what he had said, and
that it would sound as if he himself were complaining, so he continued
with as brave a voice as he could manage:
‘You see, it isn’t so bad for one who is a little grown up and has
patience to wait, ’cause you always get something after a while.’
‘Well, it would be a pretty bad world otherwise,’ remarked the master
sternly.
‘It’s only for little ones,’ continued Andy--‘for little ones like
Magnus here that it can be pretty bad. And I think it is worse for him
to see the food and not get it, even if he hasn’t a muzzle on, than for
Golden Horn, ’cause she can always get something from the gutters and
small bushes.’
‘The kind of a muzzle you have we all ought to have. We ought to have a
muzzle when we pass the inn and when tobacco tempts us so that we think
we can’t live without it.’
‘Yes, but that kind of a muzzle you’ve had ever since boyhood, my
dear,’ said Kristina, who had carried away the coffee things and now
came back. She put her head caressingly against her husband’s fresh
brown cheek.
‘And for that I got you--the only child, and the most beautiful girl
in Nolen Parish, even if I didn’t have a house and was from another
parish.’
The man drew his young wife down on his knee, deeply happy.
‘I feel as big inside when I think of it as if I owned the whole world.
And now,’ he continued, and straightened up as if he were about to lift
a heavy burden--‘now I feel strong enough to take this little fellow as
our son, because I can’t bear to think that he should go into houses
with a muzzle on.’
‘Boy, how happy you make me! I’ve just been thinking the same thing!’
Kristina threw her arms about his neck and gave him a hearty kiss.
‘Just think,’ he continued, ‘I thought when I first saw the boy that
I could grow fond of him, and it would be a sin to let him go begging
again.’
‘Yes, I liked the little fellow at once too.’
‘And we have food and room enough too. I’ve saved enough through the
muzzle I’ve had on my nose and throat so that I can take the little one
who doesn’t have father or mother.’
The young lumberman stood up. Proud and fine he looked, strong of will,
lithe, and powerful--it was evident that the muzzle had been good for
him.
‘I think the best bank for savings is just such little fellows with
good stuff in them. I am sure that the squire up at the manor house
feels the same way.’
CHAPTER XXVII
A PROBLEM, A CHOICE, AND SORROW
Magnus was chattering with Golden Horn and pulling grass for her when
he was unexpectedly called up to the young pair who sat on the bench.
When asked if he would like to stay there for always, he first answered
slowly that he for his part had nothing against it. He wasn’t exactly
happy at the suggestion, just wondering and inwardly a little excited.
So he hunched up his shoulders, put his hands in his ‘pockets,’ stared
before him, and stood there, and was silent.
It was perhaps a little disappointing to the young folks who wanted to
take off his ‘muzzle,’ and probably thought that he would cry and laugh
with the joy of being free.
And then he only stood there, and was silent, and looked thoughtful.
‘But, boy, don’t you want to stay?’ asked Kristina, surprised and
really displeased.
Worried and embarrassed, Magnus turned toward the garden where the
other two were weeding. And at once he knew what he wanted. It would be
just good for Andy and Maglena if he left them. After this they’d have
mighty little chance to pinch and comb and wash with soap! So Magnus
turned to the young people with a mischievous happy smile, and said
that he for his part thought it would be great fun to stay there.
He kept Golden Horn beside him so she should not hurt the young trees
and the gardens. Suddenly Magnus became thoughtful again. He looked
down at the goat with a wondering, frightened expression in his eyes.
‘I guess,’ stammered Magnus and became blood-red, and his voice began
to tremble----‘I guess I’d rather go away from here after all.’
‘But, boy,’ said Kristina, and looked gently and steadily into his
eyes, ‘remember that you’ll never have to starve again and walk the
roads tired and discouraged. You’ll have a nice bed with sheets and a
pillow, and a robe, and you’ll have real clothes that I’ll weave and
sew for you.’
Magnus listened happily to the description. He knew more than well what
all this meant. He certainly did not think it was any fun to walk and
walk and to starve and be afraid of people and dogs and northern lights
and ghosts on the ice, or to be dressed like a beggar and get his nose
out of joint pulling on tight shirts that were so strong that it was
impossible to tear them and so get them on more easily. No, that was no
fun. It was worse, much worse, than to be pinched by Andy or washed by
Maglena.
Again Magnus stood and considered. Golden Horn, beside him, chewed her
cud with peaceful, contented, closed eyes. She hardly opened them when
she pushed against Magnus with her nose. She wanted to be scratched
between the horns.
But Magnus thought she said: ‘Just think, old fellow, we won’t be
together. When I have a muzzle, I should think you could stand one.
That is better for us both than not being together.’
‘Golden Horn can’t get along without me,’ said Magnus, troubled. He
stared at the ground with round eyes and dug his birch-bark shoe into
the sand so that the bare ankle above it became purple.
‘The goat!’ repeated the man, amazed. ‘Don’t you believe that the goat
cares where she is! She’d just as soon go with the others whether you
are along or not.’
‘In the daytime, maybe,’ admitted Magnus. ‘But at night when it is
dark, in the winter when it is cold, and now too for that matter, she’s
used to having me sleep with my head on her when we sleep in lofts and
sheds and like that. She’d miss me terribly.’
‘She won’t think of you and won’t remember you after she has left here.
You can go to the sawmill with me, and see ships from Portugal and
Holland. And I’ll give you a nice jack-knife.’
‘A jack-knife,’ repeated Magnus. His eyes became still rounder and
bigger, and he slackened the caressing hold he had around the goat’s
neck.
‘I’ll give you a little axe too, so you can help me cut kindling wood
when mother here is going to cook good things for us to eat.’
‘_A little axe!_’
There was almost a wail in Magnus’s voice as he repeated the words.
‘And I’ll make you a little rake. It will be painted green and you can
rake and keep the yard here clean.’
The young man raised the bid. It amused him to see whether a poor boy’s
love for such a lowly creature as a goat would be so strong that he
could resist all the advantages now offered him.
‘A green rake too,’ sniffed Magnus, for the struggle within was so
great that he wept, and tears dropped from his little red snub-nose. He
could hardly control his voice enough to talk.
‘And with it you can rake here in the vegetable garden after you’ve
slept in the bed and had enough to eat and are dressed in the new
blue-striped clothes and have your cap on, a new one with a real visor.
And you have the jack-knife in a sheath like a grown-up man.’
Suddenly and violently, Magnus pushed Golden Horn away from him. He
almost kicked her.
‘Can’t you go, you goat! What do you stand here for, and stare at me
and butt me and wet me with your nose? Get away, do you hear!’
Magnus stamped his foot, so furious that he snarled. His face was red,
and the tears still ran.
Andy and Maglena, who were in the farthest corner of the garden,
wondered what was going on. But they had had lunch and now wanted to
finish weeding the beds, so they couldn’t come unless they were called.
Andy was quite worried about what Magnus was saying. But then he
thought that such nice people wouldn’t mind what such a little fellow
raved about.
‘Oscar, you’re not fair to the boy. Can’t you see how torn he is?’ said
Kristina, who interceded compassionately. ‘There is good steadfast
stuff in that little one,’ she continued. ‘And it would be really hard
to let him go now.’
The man nodded thoughtfully, looking out into space.
‘You have often said that it was all wrong for us not to have goats
down here,’ he began slowly and uncertainly.
‘Of course it’s wrong. Think of the good they are! First of all, cheese
and butter for your bread. You’d have to hunt for such warm mittens and
waterproof socks as you get when you mix goats’ hair with wool and spin
it into yarn. Kidskin is the finest you can get for robes. And every
one knows what fine leather you get from goatskin. Besides, the meat of
both goats and kids is good to eat. So it is altogether wrong not to
have goats. They’re easy to take care of, and clean, so you can’t help
liking them. A good goat gives as much milk as a young cow or an old
cow, and it doesn’t take one fourth as much fodder for a goat.’
‘That time you certainly were a chatter-box,’ laughed the man.
‘Yes; and they’re wise too. I am sure that this goat sees that the boy
is sad and that he didn’t mean anything bad when he shrieked and kicked
at her. See what good friends they are now again.’
Magnus, perplexed, angry, worried, and repentant, had run after Golden
Horn, who, repulsed, had run away a bit, but then stopped in wonder and
stared at Magnus, giving forth a complaining, rather puzzled, bleating.
These weren’t any pretty words that Golden Horn spoke to Magnus. He
understood that all too well. Magnus heard plainly what she bleated
about. Golden Horn said that she had been good to him, given him food,
warmed him, walked beside him like a good friend. And now she got a
kick and angry words without knowing why. No one else heard that Golden
Horn bleated forth all this. But Magnus heard it, and that was why he
went back to her, bent down with his arms around her neck, and said
again and again:
‘Don’t mind what I said just now; I was just talking. Are we good
friends again, little pearl? You must understand that I’ll go with
you forever, big doll. Little pearl, we must be together, and be good
friends.’
CHAPTER XXVIII
MAGNUS AND GOLDEN HORN
Now came Andy’s and Maglena’s turn to be called. They sat on the bench
between the young couple. Serious things were discussed.
First it was decided that Magnus should stay with the young pair _as
their own child_.
Then came the question of the goat. The man wondered if Andy wanted
to sell them the goat. The squire had promised that he could have two
sheep on the place, and instead he could just as well have a goat. He’d
fence in a space with a little house for her, so she wouldn’t do any
unexpected damage.
And Andy considered! Maglena noticed that, as she sat beside him, both
astonished and angry. Was Andy such a fool that he couldn’t at once say
that they couldn’t get along without Golden Horn!
Now it was Andy’s turn to be pinched. During the discussion Maglena
pinched him harder and harder. Why, he sat there like a rabbit without
will enough to refuse at once. And there! Right under Maglena’s nose he
accepts the price of twelve crowns that is offered for ‘the goat.’
‘_The goat!_’ Just as if Golden Horn were a goat, a goat to sell like
any trash of a goat.
And into the bargain, Andy sits there perfectly calm and says that he
had long thought of finding Golden Horn some good place to stay.
‘Imagine that!’ Maglena was so angry that it seemed to bubble within
her. She wanted to pound Andy, for he did not seem to pay any attention
to her pinches, even when she used her nails.
‘But are you crazy, boy?’ she screamed at last, when Andy stood up and
shook hands over the bargain. The lumberman was to keep the money until
Andy demanded it.
‘Are _you_ out of your senses, girl?’ he cried threateningly in answer.
‘Now you can just as well sell me too!’ Maglena stifled and muffled her
howls as well as she could.
‘Maglena, be quiet and control your temper,’ whispered Andy earnestly
and reproachfully. ‘You should think of what you say.’
‘As if I don’t do that!’ wailed Maglena as she half ran after Andy,
who, in order to get out of hearing of the rest, hurried back of the
house and out over the grass.
‘Golden Horn has been mine ever since Anna-Lisa left her! I have milked
her and she has called for me the minute she didn’t see me. And you
take her away from me and sell her, just like Joseph’s brothers did
with Joseph!’
Andy walked on perfectly quiet, and waited for Maglena to lose breath
and give up. When she actually did become silent, perhaps to get
strength for further objections, he broke in.
‘I suppose you think that it is fun for Golden Horn to have a muzzle on
all the time.’
‘She doesn’t have it on all the time,’ sobbed Maglena. ‘She is free in
the woods and along the roads.’
‘But you see, girl, we don’t often go through woods now. We are in big
parishes where there are only fields and meadows with the grain not
cut. You know we just about get the muzzle off when we have to put it
on again. Wasn’t it you that said that just yesterday?’
‘Ye-es,’ moaned Maglena unhappily.
‘You said she was beginning to get thin,’ added Andy inexorably.
‘Ye-es,’ wailed Maglena almost inaudibly.
‘Would you think it was any fun to walk between a row of rolls of
butter and fresh cheeses on one side of the road, and a wall of thick
bread and wheat buns and coffee bread on the other side? And you’d have
a muzzle on and couldn’t eat. Do you think that would be any fun?’
repeated Andy, sternly serious as Maglena was silent.
‘No-o,’ whispered Maglena, perfectly crushed.
‘Here she’ll have a little yard to run in, and a house with straw on
the floor to live in, grass and clover and pine branches to eat. Or she
can be tethered here on the grass all summer, so much green stuff grows
here.’
‘And maybe she’ll get bread too from these good nice people here, every
day, and everything that is left after they have eaten,’ murmured
Maglena, who began to see that Andy’s love for Golden Horn was of a
better sort than her own.
‘You see, Maglena, little girl,’ said Andy, now in the gentlest,
mildest voice he could manage. In his heart and soul he wanted only
to be good to the heart-broken little sister. ‘You can understand,
Maglena, what a good thing it is that these people will care for Magnus
too.’
‘Yes, then Golden Horn will have some one to go to when she gets
lonesome.’
‘Yes, and the poor little fellow will have her too. Magnus will be sad
and lonesome for us many times,’ added Andy with a heavy, thoughtful
expression. ‘But it will be fine for him here with such nice people.’
‘I think it was mother that led us here too, Andy. Boy,’ she went on
with a soft, deeply repentant voice, ‘are you mad at me because I
pinched you so awfully? I’m afraid I hurt you.’
‘Never!’ said Andy, with a superior air.
He did still feel Maglena’s pinches and nails; but he did not want to
make her unhappy because of that: she who was already in such despair
and grief, and now must leave Golden Horn.
Andy had long been worried and anxious about Golden Horn. Ever since
the flight from the Wicked Farm, where Golden Horn had been so cruelly
treated, he had feared that some new danger would overtake her. And it
hurt him every time he had to put the muzzle on her, now in the most
beautiful blossoming time of the year. So Andy felt relieved at finding
a good place to leave her.
CHAPTER XXIX
WHEN MAGNUS WAS LEFT ALONE
The farms lay so close together thus far down in the settlements that
Andy and Maglena, who were now without Magnus, began to long for the
woods where they thought they could live on berries instead of having
to go to strange farms every day and stand as beggars at the door.
It had not grown easier to stand at a door and wait, often both long
and well before any one bothered to greet them even, or to help them.
The children had traded whisks and egg-beaters and wooden spoons for
food, or had been given a coin for them. But one couldn’t do much when
one went from door to door, and had no definite place to work.
It seemed empty and lonely without Magnus and Golden Horn. Maglena
could scarcely bear to remember even now how sad she had felt when she
had, for the last time, brushed Golden Horn’s coat so that it was soft
and glossy. She had polished the goat’s horns with a woolen rag, had
combed her beard; and she had caressed and talked to Golden Horn--had
thanked her for all she had been to her and to her brothers and sisters
during the hard, cold, and snowy winter. Never, never would Maglena
forget Golden Horn, she promised solemnly; even if she rose so high
that she came to the king, she’d still remember Golden Horn.
And Golden Horn was tenderness and understanding itself.
Magnus would have thought that she laughed ‘he-he-he’ to cheer them up.
For she bleated so gently. It was as if she had had her own little kid
before her. She nudged Maglena with her nose, and licked the inside of
her hands. Golden Horn understood clearly that a parting was at hand.
Andy had found it hard, too, with Magnus, who, with Golden Horn, went
with them a bit down the road. He must once again remind the little
brother of everything mother wanted them to remember. Andy was so
worried because Magnus still stumbled over ‘Thy will be done’ in ‘Our
Father.’
Magnus had to repeat the whole prayer three times. At last it went
fluently, at least for this time.
‘For you see, Magnus,’ assured Andy seriously, ‘mother said every one
should know that prayer, both big and little, read it and really know
it by heart so as to fly up to heaven more easily, and sort of read
open the door to heaven every day, you know, boy. And then mother
said that some time _every one in the whole world_ will fly up to God
through that prayer, both rich and poor. It is as if we must learn the
way there till the time when we really go there. God knows your voice
and then you aren’t strange to Him, and can go right into heaven to God
as mother did when she died.’
‘You don’t have to worry,’ said Magnus sullenly. ‘I didn’t stumble
once this last time, and I guess I can remember what mother said just
as well as you can. I remember her and the little gray house, and I’d
rather be there than any other place, if I only had her and Golden Horn
there.’
With this tender and delicate assurance at the moment of parting,
Magnus turned to go back, with Golden Horn, to the sawmill and the
pretty little house.
He hadn’t any great desire either to have Andy and Maglena see the
tears that, to his great indignation and astonishment, rushed to his
eyes. Since he was quite sure that he felt no regret in parting from
his brother and sister, he thought the tears had no business in coming
at all. With his hand clasping one of Golden Horn’s horns, he went now
without even shaking hands or saying a word of farewell.
Maglena stood nonplussed. It seemed like a bad dream that both of them,
Golden Horn and Magnus, should now be far away from her. It mustn’t be.
Not like this, so suddenly. She must keep them a little while longer.
And Magnus must have some souvenir of her, so that he would never
forget his sister and her warnings. Maglena took the knapsack from
Andy’s shoulders quickly and with trembling hands. With a practiced
hand she reached down to the very bottom of it.
‘The brass comb!’ Magnus should have from her the very brass comb
itself to keep himself nice on the outside, just as Andy had given him
that with which to keep himself nice on the inside.
‘Magnus!’ called Maglena. ‘Boy, wait!’
Magnus slowed down without turning around.
He started with aversion when Maglena, who had run after him, stopped
short and thrust the comb past his ear, and past his nose, which it
nearly scraped.
The hated brass comb gleamed in the sun right before his eyes. Magnus
was furious with a vengeance, and Maglena literally jumped backward
when he turned a tear-drenched face with actually fiery eyes toward
her. He jerked the comb away from her and banged it down in the road.
‘I believe you want to kill me with that truck! I’ve gone out to
strangers to get away from that cat-claw and then you come galloping
after me with it. Take the comb yourself, and comb out your curls so
that your hair can be smooth for once like other people’s. Golden Horn
and I can get along all right.’
With that Magnus set off with Golden Horn, who turned and twisted to
get away in order to be caressed and petted a bit by Maglena. She, who
had had to bend down to pick up the comb, stood as if petrified.
Golden Horn and Magnus melted away in the dust of the road, and became
smaller and smaller. They disappeared behind a pile of boards without
turning around, which, for the goat, would have been rather hard,
considering the steady hold with which Magnus held her head.
Perhaps Maglena would have wondered less and felt lighter of heart if
she had seen how Magnus stopped behind the pile of boards and peeped
out through the cracks after her and Andy as long as he could see them.
She would have been on the verge of tears if she had seen him bend down
over Golden Horn and heard his warm assurances to the goat:
‘Do you know, Golden Horn, now I’ll call you both Andy and Maglena.
I’ll call you Andy in the evenings when it seems that I can’t say “Our
Father”; and Maglena in the mornings when I don’t want to comb myself.
I was so awfully mad, I don’t know why; and I’m crying now, I don’t
know why either, when I’m mad at Maglena. The tears run whether I want
them to or not. See, now Andy and Maglena are going down the hill. Now
I see only the red striped shawl on Maglena’s head, and now only Andy’s
cap. Now they are gone. Come, now, little Andy, sweet Maglena, we have
other things to do besides standing here looking at something that
isn’t here.’
Magnus had not turned around before Kristina, who longed for the boy
from her home parish, and the goat, and understood that the little
one felt sad, was beside him. She had sandwiches with her in a little
basket which contained even some bits of bread for Golden Horn.
CHAPTER XXX
IN THE BERRY WOODS
It was high summer. The fields were like brides clad in blossoming
clover, camomile, daisies, and blue-bells. Wild strawberries and
‘arctic raspberries’ shone bright red along the roadsides. Raspberries
were ripening in the forest clearings, and the mile-wide marshes
were full of unripe cloud-berries which, yellow or rosy, were still
protected by the four-leaved, blue-green hard calyx of the flower.
Grindstones were turning in the farmyards to sharpen scythes. Along the
house walls stood rakes painted in bright colors. For it was almost
haying time, and with that came something of festivity and rush, of
life and the joy of work. But it had not yet begun. The cows were still
up at the dairy farms.
Andy and Maglena, who had drawn back from the settlements, heard and
saw both cows and goats as they followed the forest paths between the
dairy farms. If they reached one before evening, all well and good. If
not, they did not think they suffered any by sleeping out-of-doors now
and again.
At those times they ate their supper in some really lovely blueberry
glade, and slept in the heather, although the sun, as its habit is up
there in Norrland, shone nearly all night.
Andy had learned to make a horn out of split bits of pine and
birch-bark, and he had hardly waked up in the morning and sat up in the
moss glittering with dew, before he began to blow, greatly pleased when
he was able to force out several tones in succession. He kept on with
it tirelessly, when he was not helping Maglena strip fine roots and
tough runners out of which they were going to make baskets to sell when
they had to go back to the settlements.
One evening, near haying time, Andy and Maglena were deep in the forest
wilds. It was Saturday evening, and they had found a lovely spot: had
just happened upon an open place beautifully shaded by weeping birches
and other leafy trees.
A little stream in whose deep clear water brook trout splashed and
threw themselves about, shining like silver, flowed near by, murmuring
softly. In the middle of the opening there was a huge stone. It was
flat on top, and although it was so high and steep as to be almost
inaccessible, Andy had climbed up, with the greatest difficulty, for he
thought it was a fitting pulpit for a service in the forest church on a
Saturday evening.
Maglena, who stood below, had rung in the Sabbath--‘Bing, bong, bing,
bong’--and at the same time had pounded the stone with another stone
that seemed to her to give forth a ringing sound.
Andy stood up there on the rocks, earnest, with bowed head and folded
hands. Maglena sat on a mossy knoll, just as earnest and with folded
hands.
The minister, Andy, in a solemn voice, read a psalm out of an old
song-book that mother had had. Then he raised his head. The late
afternoon sun shooting beams down between the tree-trunks laid a
shimmer of light over his brown-skinned, angular little face with the
deep, serious eyes and the dark hair.
CHAPTER XXXI
A STRUGGLE WITH OLD BRUIN
Andy had just begun with ‘Our text shall be--’ when he was interrupted
and silenced by a frightful crashing noise of dry roots being broken
and branches being snapped off. A sound like the panting and puffing
of a frightened and hunted animal came nearer. At the same time came
a dull and terrifying grumbling and growling, which made the very
tree-trunks tremble.
Something white gleamed forth. A young heifer broke out from the woods
into the open space, running the race of a death-hunted animal. A
full-grown bear was at her heels, a rough brown beast, with small eyes
gleaming wickedly and hungrily out of the shaggy head.
Instantly Andy threw down the book out of which he was just about to
preach. Swift as lightning he seized the horn, put it to his lips, and
blew with all his strength right into the bear’s ears, just as he ran
past the stone after the heifer, which he was on the point of seizing.
The bear staggered backward at the ugly, unexpected noise right in
his sensitive ears. It was exactly as if he had received a blow on
the head, for the sounds Andy was able to force from the horn were
frightful.
The bear rose on his hind legs and put one of his front paws to his
ear. Then he caught sight of the boy rascal on the stone and turned his
attention to him, while the heifer, bellowing and with tail in air,
disappeared into the woods.
If Andy’s position up there on the stone, with the bear reaching
furiously up after him with his paws, was anything but pleasant,
Maglena’s, who was down below, was not much better.
She did not dare move, and she did not dare scream. Andy shrieked at
her, between his roaring into the horn at the bear, to keep quiet so
that the beast would not notice that she was there.
‘Be quiet!’ But it is not so easy to be quiet when one is small and
alone just a few steps from a hungry, thwarted, growling bear, for whom
one would be only a bite, and, besides, when one is frightened to death
over a brother who is in a position almost as dangerous, and who is the
only thing one owns in all the world.
But Maglena controlled herself and did not scream, though she trembled
like an aspen tree when the north wind shakes it.
‘Climb up on the east side!’ shrieked Andy ferociously, in order
to frighten the bear with the same voice when he no longer had the
strength to blow the horn. Maglena took a few flying leaps toward the
stone. Her brother’s words were a command almost as if followed by the
lash.
She threw off the birch-bark shoes, stuck toes and fingers into the
crevices, tore her skin, broke her nails, was purple in the face with
fright and exertion--every moment on the verge of slipping and plunging
down again. Andy heard her panting between the bear’s roars. He leaped
back, leaned down and caught hold of her, so she got over the steepest
part.
Maglena suddenly became strangely strong and brave. In comparison
with being down there alone face to face with the bear, she felt safe
and protected up here on the stone with Andy beside her. This feeling
renewed her strength and put life into her limbs and a voice into her
throat.
She had heard that one could scare a bear with shrieks and clamor and
a fearless attitude. And Maglena knew well that he was afraid of the
look in people’s eyes, so she lay down flat on her stomach, with her
head out over the stone and shrieked at the bear, who, at sight of her,
stepped backward amazed, and peered up at her with a tragic-comic,
almost frightened look in his eyes.
He did not look so dangerous from here either, thought Maglena. When he
put his head on the side like that and whined a little, as if he had an
earache from the horn’s cracked roaring, he seemed simply dejected and
depressed.
‘Be quiet a bit, Andy,’ cried Maglena petulantly; the din had become
too much even for her ears. Andy lowered the horn, astonished at his
sister’s undaunted voice.
‘Old Fellow, old Bruin,’ said Maglena with her eyes fixed steadily
on the bear as she used to do when she wanted to quiet other angry
animals. ‘Old Brownie!’ Her voice sounded actually caressing. ‘You
mustn’t be mad at us. We are small, we are, and alone, and we haven’t
anything to defend ourselves with against you.’
The bear scratched himself behind the ear with his paw, his eyes
became less angry. The ringing, caressing voice, and the man-child’s
good, steady, strong-willed gaze made him uncertain and doubtful as
to whether he should continue to try to get at the boy in return for
the delicious heifer he had let slip, or whether he should give up and
leave the poor little humans in peace.
The bear lowered himself thoughtfully, ready to stand with all four
feet on the ground. Then suddenly, again embittered and _certain_ of
what he should do, he raised himself furiously on two.
The boy’s hated horn had pierced his ears again. It made him wild and
savage. It was impossible that one who brought about such a fiendish
alarm should be allowed to live.
‘Oh, Andy, how you spoil things!’ complained Maglena, ready to cry.
‘Now he’s just as mad or madder, because it hurts his ears, and he
doesn’t know what he’s doing. Can’t you be quiet?’
‘Be quiet when he can take hold in the cracks and be up here in one
single leap and make an end of us both at once!’
Andy seized the horn again.
‘But I say you must be quiet,’ whispered Maglena with strangely
gleaming eyes. She reached up and jerked the horn away from her brother.
She threw herself down again with her head out over the stone. The
light hair, looking like gold in the sunlight, shone about her head,
her eyes glowed with kindness and sympathy and agony.
‘Dear, dear old Woolly Coat, old Fellow, Big Father, don’t be mad, but
go away. You have the whole woods to be in; you can eat all kinds of
berries all summer. In the winter you sleep and don’t have to go all
over the country for food.’
The bear became thoughtful again. He sank down on three feet, sat
waving his right front paw in the air as if to cool his roused feelings
or to gather strength for a new attack.
Andy was absolutely astonished over his sister’s somehow remarkable
ability to quiet the wild animal. He realized that the bear flared up
at the mere sight of him, and that it was Maglena’s voice and words
that calmed the beast. So Andy crept aside and sat down out of sight of
the dangerous creature.
‘Sing to him, Maglena,’ he whispered. Andy felt that if Maglena’s
talking alone could make such an impression on the bear, her singing
would have a still greater effect. ‘Sing,’ he repeated, ‘so we can get
away from here before night.’
Maglena was dizzy and beside herself in the struggle to quiet the
bear’s roused and angry temper, so that it did not seem stranger to
her to sing than to talk, when words, no matter how caressingly or
pleadingly spoken, were not enough.
‘You are my rose, my very heart,’
she sang with a voice at first trembling and uncertain. The tears came
to Andy’s eyes when he heard her.
‘No one shall us ever part,’
sang Maglena more bravely when she saw the bear take his natural
position on four feet, with his head on the side and with wonder rather
than anger in his eyes, and stare up at her.
‘Till death has won his will,’
finished Maglena with the sweetest sadness in her voice.
Both her hair and her eyes, which never left the bear, reflected the
sun’s golden rays.
‘Old Bruin, old Woolly Coat, Big Father,’ shook himself. He felt
disappointed, depressed, and embarrassed. After a moment’s meditation
he bowed his head as if ashamed, and plunged away into the woods
without following the trail of the heifer.
‘You see, he’s going, poor thing; he’s ashamed because he’s a wild
animal and we are people,’ said Maglena. She gazed with a look of real
sympathy after the bear, who, away from the power of Maglena’s eyes,
galloped away so that the branches crashed under him.
[Illustration: ‘OLD BRUIN, OLD WOOLLY COAT, BIG FATHER,’ SHOOK
HIMSELF]
Andy’s spirits rose suddenly. ‘Well, now there is nothing for us to do
but to get away from this stone and into the blueberry patch, ’cause
I’m terribly hungry.’
‘The berries can be in peace for me. Here I’ll stay all night; I’m as
tired as if I’d walked here all the way from Barren Moor in one day,’
answered Maglena, who now with a white face and trembling knees sank
down on the mossy stone.
‘Then I’ll go alone and pick berries for you too, for you’re worth that
and more too.’
Andy made ready to climb down. He was already over the edge with
knees and toes ready to slide down when he heard a beautiful trilling
yodeling not more than a quarter of a mile away.
He flew up on the stone again as swiftly as if he had had wings.
‘Maglena, girl! There are people in the woods! How can they find us
when we can’t yodel back to them?’
‘Take the horn, boy,’ cried Maglena eagerly; even she had sprung up,
all fatigue forgotten.
‘Listen, it’s a dairymaid calling, and one who knows how too.’
Andy took the horn and blew with all his strength--_tru, pi-ri-tu-ut,
pruth-tu-hut_.
‘They’re yodeling and calling for the heifer!’
‘Answer, Andy, so we can tell them where she went.’
‘Girl, I’m ashamed, it sounds so awful when I try to blow.’
‘Are people going to be anxious about the cow and maybe lose her if she
lies down in the marsh just because you are ashamed? If you hadn’t had
the horn when the bear was after her, she’d have been dead now. Blow
right away!’
Andy put the horn to his mouth. He called forth such terrible
trumpeting and such ear-splitting noises that Maglena had to cover her
ears with both hands.
But when he stopped, both yodeling and voices were nearer.
CHAPTER XXXII
UP AT A DAIRY FARM
Andy and Maglena stood still on the stone. They began to scream, and
call, and to try to yodel themselves, so cheered were they by the
beautiful sounds that echoed through the woods in ringing, rolling
tones.
But when voices were heard just beside them, Maglena became painfully
shy again. She crept down on the stone behind Andy. In the bushes she
glimpsed a red striped headcloth and a blue cotton skirt. Soon she
heard a kind, sympathetic voice call, ‘But, children, how did you get
up there?’
‘And how in the world are you going to get down?’ added another voice,
a child’s voice.
Maglena sat up.
‘Oh, please come down,’ called the little girl, who stood near the
stone, in a pleading voice. She was well dressed, in a hand-woven
blue-striped hempen cloth dress, an apron of white and red dotted
printed calico, and, what roused doubt and discomfort in Maglena’s
heart, she wore a _hat_ with a blue ribbon around the crown. Two thick
light braids were rolled up and fastened with dark blue bows at the
ears. It was awfully hard to come down among such fine people.
But Andy drove her on. He worked himself down in front of her and
finally got her down.
When once down, Maglena felt happy and safe, as if she had reached dry
land after a shipwreck.
Sara, who yodeled so beautifully, looked kind and good. She had a
little knapsack on her back. She swung this off and brought forth
sandwiches and goats’-milk cheese and butter for supper.
She told the children that she was a dairymaid at the minister’s dairy
farm; that Elsa was the minister’s eldest daughter, who had insisted on
coming with her to the woods to look for little Golden Star, who hadn’t
come home with the other cattle the evening before. They were afraid
that a bear had killed her, because a young bear had been seen in the
woods, and you never knew if he’d be content with blueberries or had
already tasted blood.
‘It was my cow,’ said Elsa. ‘I’ve milked her every day since we came up
here, and she licked me and ran after me wherever I went. I miss Golden
Star terribly.’
‘Old Bruin hasn’t killed her yet, but he was after her,’ said Andy with
a cocksure air. ‘He only scared her. She ran that way. There is a marsh
there, so maybe she’s lying down there. But, anyway, we have time to
get her up again ’cause she just got there.’
The sound of a horn came trilling from the direction of the marsh.
‘Oh, gracious, Karl has found Golden Star!’ cried Sara, her cheeks
red, radiant with joy. She threw the knapsack on her back and answered
with a yodeling that rang through the woods. Then she ran off in her
birch-bark shoes, so quickly, so lightly, that the children had trouble
in following her.
A cow bellowed wildly and tremblingly.
When the children reached the marsh, they saw Golden Star standing
there dripping wet, her otherwise red and white skin gray with mud.
Karl, who worked the minister’s farm, and Sara, who had arrived a
little before them, just in time to help get the cow up out of the
marsh before her head sank into the thick water, stood beside her,
petting her and chattering encouragingly. Sara thanked Karl as if he
had saved the cow, though Elsa assured her that Andy and Maglena alone
had done it. She confided to her new friends that Sara was so fond of
Karl that there wasn’t anything in the world she didn’t believe he
could do. Annika, their last dairymaid, had been just like that with
Abraham before, and now they were married.
Karl had just come up to the dairy farm. He was going to carry home the
butter and cheese on horseback, on Tuesday, when the cows were to be
driven home for the haying, but he didn’t have to come on Saturday for
that! No, that was just for Sara’s sake!
Elsa held Maglena’s hand. Andy too walked at her side when they could
walk that way in the woods and didn’t have to climb over pebbly paths,
jump on slippery stones in the brooks, or walk balancing themselves
with outstretched arms and tongues hanging halfway out when they
crossed wet narrow logs that were thrown over the swaying marsh’s many
treacherous pools.
Smoke was coming from the chimney when the party, with the cow, finally
reached the farm. And it was already quite late at night, though
as light as a clear summer day. Only so strangely quiet, since all
the birds, except the cuckoo and thrush, were asleep. Cow-bells and
yodeling and horns were no longer heard from the woods. The little pool
that gleamed below the pasture lay calm, as if it had fallen asleep,
covered with a lovely veil of mist.
But what a rumpus when Golden Star, who had caused so much worry, was
seen in the group of known and unknown people. The cow ran through the
open gate, straight to the barn door, followed by Sara.
Andy and Maglena stopped, terrified. Those must be fairies up there
at the house. Five children, queerly clad, as if dressed only in a
chemise, stood on a high flat stone just outside the door, hair hanging
loosely about them, barefooted and barelegged. They held each other’s
hands, swung their arms slowly, and sang:
‘Wagtail, robin, fallowfinch, thrush, follow one another.’
Of course Andy and Maglena could not be expected to know that the
children there were singing to scare away trolls and wolves from the
farm and the cattle, and that they made up different songs every
evening, or that they had to be serious, and neither talk nor laugh
while they sang.
They had to finish the song, though their eyes burned with wonder and
curiosity when they saw the two wandering children down at the gate.
‘Follow one another,’ they finished the song, which Angela had made up
this time, and which was pretty and easy to sing. But now they jumped
down like wild animals from the stone and streaked down to the gate.
If the bear hadn’t been in the woods, it is a question whether Maglena,
and even Andy, hadn’t fled back at once at the sight.
‘Now we are wild swans!’ shrieked the strange white fairies, ‘and now
we’ll turn you into swans too.’
‘Soon the sun will come up, and then we’ll fly away to Egypt,’ one half
sang. She had red cheeks and eyes that sparkled, and hair as long and
thick as a horse’s mane.
‘There are princesses there with curly hair, who eat on golden plates,’
trilled another, a pretty dainty girl with a red belt about her
chemise, and with curly hair that flew about her head as she danced.
‘We’ll fly over the Mediterranean Sea, and take you with us, if only
we don’t drown in the sea,’ murmured another red-cheeked girl with a
black mane of hair and big eyes.
‘Plump down--crash! Sea and splash!’ screamed another little one. She
stood in a water puddle, and jumped up and down so that the mud flew
about her and colored her feet and legs gray.
‘You sing and make up something too, Sylvia, otherwise you aren’t a
swan,’ she continued.
‘I can’t do anything,’ answered Sylvia, a dainty little girl who looked
like a lovely doll. ‘You make up something for me, Ingegard, because
I only know the songs big people sing, sort of fancy songs, and they
don’t sound pretty here.’
‘No, swans don’t sing that kind,’ admitted Ingegard, the girl with the
thick mane and the kind eyes.
‘Kulleri toova,’
sang Ingegard for Sylvia, slowly and sadly as a goatherd would sing it.
‘Twelve men in a wood,
Twelve men are they,
Twelve swords have they,
Me they want to lure away,
Kulleri toova.’
‘Now we’ll dance around you nine times against the sun, and then you’ll
be wild swans too,’ cried Viva, who came scuttling up from the mud
puddle.
They made a ring around the mountain children, almost petrified with
alarm and wonder. They danced, keeping time with violently swinging
arms, holding one another tightly.
‘Ptroo, vall! Ptroo, vall!
Up on a dairy farm
There are goats, there are fays,
And little girls and boys to play with.’
Andy and Maglena did not look at that moment like ‘little girls and
boys,’ to ‘play’ with. They stood blushing, with downcast eyes, and
really felt more like crying than dancing.
Elsa came running and rescued them.
‘There is food and coffee ready in the house!’
She drew Andy with her. Ingegard and Sylvia took Maglena between them
and ran across the pasture up toward the house.
Sara stood in the cool, half-dark milk-room, and poured the milk into
bowls. The door out into the big room stood open. A fireplace filled
the corner near the door. A fire burned brightly, though it was a light
warm summer night. But potatoes had been boiled over it, and the coffee
for the cow-seekers.
Sara was quite content because she did not have to milk the cows now in
the middle of the night. She had been much surprised to find all the
cows milked, except Rose-on-the-Nose. That cow kicked and refused to
give her milk when only youngsters came clattering with milk pail and
stool, and tried.
Ingegard explained that they couldn’t bear to hear the cows mooing in
misery because of too much milk. So they had milked.
CHAPTER XXXIII
QUARRELS AND RECONCILIATION
All the children were at last in bed and asleep. But it was terribly
provoking for six of them to wake up in the late afternoon on Sunday
and find the house empty of people. Still worse was it to find the
cow-house empty too, all the cows they had determined to milk already
out. The cows which they had ‘divided’ among them all to milk, the one
most easily milked, Dancing Rose, to Viva, were grazing miles off in
the woods. The goats too.
Pelle had not done as he had promised when he had come home late at
night long after the others, after having been out hunting for Golden
Star.
He had promised to take all the children with him to the woods as
goatherds. They were going to row over the river to the mill settlement
where there was a big black bull from foreign lands: a bull that had a
brass ring in his nose and a chain around his forehead, and that was so
furious when he saw children that he roared so that smoke came from his
nostrils, and he had to be kept in a special enclosure during the day.
And Pelle had promised that they might fish for trout in a little
mountain stream. And he was going to teach Andy to blow in another sort
of horn that was easier than the one he had made. They were going to
see a hole where robbers had lived once upon a time. You could creep
in, big as you were, through a hole that you could scarcely see in the
mountain and then stand there, as many as fifteen men strong.
Pelle was going to show them a place in the woods where there was a
white ring right in the green moss, left by fairies who used to dance
there. And he had promised to take them to a spot in the mountains
where he had once seen a wood-nymph. She was dressed in green with long
hair, yellow as corn silk, and she had looked at him and beckoned to
him so that he was just about to follow her when he suddenly thought
she must be a wood-nymph, and said the name of Jesus. Then she had
slunk away and become like a kneading-trough.
And all the berries they were going to pick, and cat-gold and white
marble pebbles that Pelle had promised them and that could be found
only in one place! Such grumbling and discontent! Such sour faces as
appeared up at the dairy farm that day, it would not be easy to find on
such a radiantly beautiful sunshiny afternoon.
‘There the sun stares in at the window and pretends to be so happy and
noble,’ sniffed Ingegard, and pulled at her hair as she braided it.
‘He looks as if he thought we ought to be glad just because we have
him,’ muttered Gertrude, and tied a hard, provoking knot in her
petticoat tape with angry, violent movements.
‘And not a spark of fire,’ mumbled Elsa. She was dressed and stood
practically in the huge fireplace with an armful of sticks that she
laid on the coals that really gleamed quite defensibly.
A blaze flamed up at once, and now Elsa said that she was being burned
up, though just a minute ago ‘not a spark’ was to be found.
It was Sunday and surely they ought to be given coffee with the rusks
they had brought from home, that day at least.
‘Don’t try to put off any skim milk on us, I tell you,’ said Angela in
a monotonous complaining tone to Elsa, who, with an empty wooden bowl,
went toward the milk-room. Angela’s long silky hair had tangled because
she had forgotten to twist it up in curl-papers the night before. She
was so irritable and impatient that Viva insisted that she fizzed when,
wetting her finger, she touched her, as you do when you feel to see if
a flatiron is hot enough.
‘You’re stupid! And mean too,’ said Angela to Viva, who, barelegged,
pinned up her underskirt like trousers and said that she was the master
of the house and had the right to be whatever she wanted to be.
Sylvia sat upright in the lower bed and wept. Everything was ‘horrid’
and she longed for her mother. ‘Boo-hoo-hoo!’ she sniffed. ‘What did I
come here for? It was much nicer and better at home.’
Which remark was true enough if with the room where she was now she
compared her parents’ city apartment of ten luxurious rooms containing
pictures, rugs, crystal, and silver, besides great soft beds, the
finest linens, and silk covers.
Yellow-green moss grew in the cracks in the plank walls. Benches and
stools were actually shiny with wear, and were coarse and unpainted.
The floor was unplaned, with wide cracks, the door clumsy with a big
iron hook instead of a lock. The bed, where she had just awakened so
out of sorts, was filled with crackling straw, covered with a coarse
linen sheet. Instead of a ‘silk comfort’ she had a sheepskin robe to
pull up about her, though she was so warm she wanted to throw it to the
ends of the world.
‘Well, who asked you to come along?’ said Viva impudently. ‘You could
have stayed at home without us--cry-baby! Just the same, you had half
of the stick of licorice that we had with us for a party, and the
biggest piece of sugar-candy, when Elsa divided it, and a whole cup of
oat kernels when we got only a half because Angela made us believe that
it is nice to let company eat up everything that’s good and that you
want yourself.’
‘Oh, goodness! I believe you’re bewitched, Viva,’ wailed Sylvia, who
with her elbows on her drawn-up knees still sat in bed, with her
white-blond hair strained out between her fingers as her head rested on
her hands, a picture of deepest misery.
‘Gracious! Licorice! You count a poor little piece of licorice! Why,
I could have a whole house made of licorice, with sugar-candy windows
and a butter-scotch roof, and with walls made of only oat kernels. Papa
has an awful lot of money, Lina says, and I’ll ask him to build me a
house like that, and you won’t even get a chance to lick the licorice
threshold.’
‘You’re quite right, my little pig,’ smirked Viva, and kissed her
fingers to Sylvia.
She had put a little brown birch twig between her lips and pretended
to smoke as she walked back and forth with her hands in her ‘pockets.’
A fine tailor from town had lived with them a while and sewed her
father’s and the men’s homespun clothes, and Viva had treasured his
every move and word.
She sat down on a three-legged stool beside the bed and sang a verse of
a ballad, slowly, with half-closed eyes:
‘On a flower-clad knoll sat Hjalmar and sang
About summer’s beauty and light,
And the roses’ bright heads and the leaves of the flowers
Bowed deeply and gravely their thanks.’
‘Be quiet, Viva,’ whispered Ingegard, ‘you’ll wake up the poor little
things in the milk-room.’
‘Well, you see, my little sweet, that’s what I want to do,’ babbled
Viva, whirling around.
‘You see, I don’t want them to be like us. There is nothing meaner,
more awful than to wake up in the morning, when it is evening.’
‘He saw only her,’
continued Viva.
‘Saw the rose that burned purple on a snow-white skin,’
she bawled now right at the milk-room door. She stopped abruptly,
astonished and completely taken aback.
The door opened at the same moment, and Andy and Maglena showed
themselves in the doorway. Fully dressed, combed, washed until they
shone, happy and beaming, they seemed to radiate sunshine.
Maglena’s hands were full of wild lilies-of-the-valley, twin-flowers,
and star-flowers. Andy had made boxes out of birch-bark, six of them.
He carried them carefully on one arm.
They were filled to the top with early ripe cloud-berries.
‘Are you _up_?’ asked Viva sharply, though she saw them fully dressed
before her. ‘I thought you were sleeping. Why in the world did you get
up?’ she continued in an envious, deeply disapproving tone.
‘Because Pelle woke us before he went off with the cattle this morning.’
‘O-oh, and the mean thing wouldn’t wake us!’ said Gertrude, almost with
tears in her voice.
‘He did what he could,’ said Andy. ‘He called and screamed here at
the door, and blew the horn right outside the wall where the bed is.
Sara yodeled and Karl blew his horn. The cows made a lot of noise too
when they were let out, so we thought that would wake you up.’ Andy set
forth the marsh berries on the little table beside the window while he
made his explanation.
‘Ugh, that isn’t enough to wake us, he knows that well enough,’ sniffed
Ingegard. ‘That just puts you to sleep.’
‘Have you been out having fun all day?’ asked Elsa almost reproachfully.
‘Well, I don’t know that we’ve had fun. We’ve helped in the cow-house;
we milked all the goats,’ enlightened Andy doubtfully.
‘Well, that was fun,’ decided Gertrude.
‘And then we groomed the cows, before they were let out,’ said Maglena,
pleased.
‘That’s just what we used to do too,’ Gertrude joined in. ‘And they’re
so happy and soft and grateful. Oh, oh, _oh_! And we’ve just slept. And
it’s almost the last day at the farm. Just as if we couldn’t sleep as
much as we need to at home, when we go to school.’
‘Ugh, yes, so awful, and it’s too late to change it,’ sighed Ingegard.
‘And then I suppose you were in the woods and on the marsh?’ asked
Angela, who was still busy trying to make her locks lie properly.
‘Yes, but in church, too,’ answered Maglena earnestly, though a little
embarrassed and doubtful.
‘In church?’ screamed the children all at once. ‘In church!--but that
is twelve miles from here!’
‘Be quiet, Maglena,’ warned Andy and looked mightily troubled.
Maglena put her hands under her apron and crept down on the threshold
of the open door, obviously determined to obey her brother’s command.
‘In which church? Tell us, do you hear?’ asked Elsa, going to the
doorway to Maglena with a piece of bread and butter in her hand.
‘It wasn’t anything. I was just talking.’
‘Listen, Maglena, were you in a pretend-church?’ said Ingegard, who,
with her bread and butter, sat down beside Maglena.
‘I don’t know what kind of a church,’ evaded Maglena.
‘Please, dear sweet Maglena, tell me, _just_ me, what church were you
in,’ whispered Sylvia.
In her long nightgown she sprang out of bed and ran across the floor,
throwing herself into Maglena’s lap with her arms around her neck.
‘Please, _sweet_ Lena, tell me, just me!’
Maglena looked anxiously over at Andy, who sat very properly at the
table and ate marsh berries and milk with Angela, Viva, and the twins,
Ingegard and Gertrude.
‘Tell if you want to,’ consented Andy, who saw his sister’s troubled
look.
‘To me, just to me,’ whispered Sylvia.
‘How did the church look?’
‘Green inside with a blue ceiling.’
‘Was it the woods? Was God the minister?’ whispered Sylvia, suddenly
very serious. ‘God came to us and took back my little sister Eva that
I used to have. She has so much fun now that she doesn’t want to come
back to me. When I get lonesome I think sometimes that I’ll go up to
her to God. Tell me, was God the minister?’
‘No-o, he was only Andy.’
Viva had come up quietly. She heard the minister’s name.
‘Do you know,’ she cried, ‘now when we are ready and have eaten and
everything, we’ll go to church! Andy will be the minister, ’cause he
has preached before to-day, to Maglena.’
Andy reddened up over his ears.
‘Yes, Andy, if you’re used to being minister, you’ll have to preach
to us,’ said Elsa gently and seriously. ‘We have just slept and been
horrid and quarreled with each other because we were mad at ourselves
and you can’t quarrel with yourself. We’ve kept on like that all
Sunday, ever since we woke up.’
‘Yes, we _must_ get a little Sunday into us, and be good again, so
of course you’ll have to preach, Andy,’ said Ingegard, and looked
pleadingly at Andy with kind, radiant eyes.
‘Remember, Andy, that we’ve been mean to each other for nothing.
Remember that you have to make us good on Sunday,’ said Gertrude
eagerly. She folded up her skirt about her as the peasant women do when
they ride to church, and put the red striped sunbonnet on, ready to be
off.
‘And we’ll sing together, Andy,’ said Angela. ‘Go first now, and we’ll
come after.’
Angela’s voice was so steady and convincing that Andy, without further
ado, rose and led the way.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AGAIN IN THE PULPIT
Andy stood again in a pulpit in the woods. This time on only a fairly
high stone that was entirely overgrown with a shimmering green-white
moss.
‘The church people’ had come from all directions; some had had a long
way to come. They had sought roundabout ways between the tree-trunks
and around small bogs. Now they sat in a row on some old decayed
moss-covered logs that had been there beside the road long before the
dairy farm was built.
‘Begin the song, Angela,’ said Elsa. ‘Take “the forest birds.” The
birds here in the woods have started it already.’
‘The forest birds are singing
In a happy mood,’
sang Angela in a strong pure voice. All the children joined in. Andy
and Maglena also, perfectly astonished that they knew the same song as
these fine city children. They forgot that they did not really belong
together, a feeling that had somewhat oppressed them before, but sang
as they used to sing when they were all together in the little gray
cottage when mother was alive.
‘The forest birds are singing
In a happy mood,
As on a branch they’re swinging,
Chirping, God is good! God is good!’
The song ceased. Andy stood up on the stone as he had stood there
before that day and preached to Maglena. Then it had been so easy for
him to talk. Every little flower in the woods, the mountain stream,
their own escape from the bear, all the dangers from which they had
been so marvelously delivered--about all this he had preached so
mightily that Maglena had wept and wiped her nose as grown people used
to do in church, though this time she had no thought of imitating them,
but was seriously impressed with Andy’s words. And now he stood there
and twisted about and looked silly.
Maglena was actually ashamed of him. ‘The church people’ began to
whisper and giggle.
‘Hurry up, Andy,’ snapped Maglena. ‘They’re sitting here waiting. You
can make up something like you did before, I should think.’
Andy agonized and twisted. He half-closed his eyes to shut out the
disturbing sight of the congregation. The audience sat like real church
people waiting, with handkerchiefs ready for tears, in case Andy
should preach as the minister did who was up in the Lapp mountains and
preached when the chapel there was dedicated.
‘Oh, Andy, but you are silly!’
Andy opened anguished eyes. A spider that sat in the shimmering web it
had spun between slender birch branches struck his eye. Andy stared at
it. A thoughtful look came into his eyes. He began to preach.
‘In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now I see
a spider sitting in the middle of his web, full of food, and I just
happened to think that he is like all Wrong. Because Wrong always has a
net out to catch us. When we are mad at each other, he has caught us.
And when we are lazy, and when we are discontented, then he has caught
us.’
A loon flew with a heartrending, melancholy cry over the marsh toward
the forest glade where the other ‘church’ was.
Andy noticed the plaintive sound.
‘Listen to the loon, how sad he sounds. That’s the way it sounds inside
of us when we have been angry and wicked and discontented with what
we have, and when we can’t stand having a muzzle on, but think that a
muzzle is too hard to bear, and do not want to understand that it is
God who must put it on us when He sees that we haven’t sense enough
ourselves to know what we should have. We fly and fly like the loon
to get to God and ask Him to like us, and to care for us again.’ Andy
thought of finishing his sermon now, but the song came to his mind.
‘God wants us to like Him and see that He is good, and sing about it,
the way the morning in the mountains sings about it, as “clear streams
and brooks” sing and ripple, and as the forest birds chirp about it “in
happy mood.” God is good to people whether they are big or little, and
to animals.’
Andy, who had stood with his face turned up toward the sunbeams between
the firs, thought, when he opened his eyes, that the group on the logs
had increased. But the sun had blinded him so he could not really see.
‘We will sing now, “The whole world praises the Lord,”’ he announced
from the pulpit. And what a singing! A singing as if you were in
heaven, Andy thought. The psalm resounded at once in several parts, as
did the songs on Christmas morning at Barren Moor.
CHAPTER XXXV
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Andy, who had stood singing with his eyes still lifted toward the late
evening sun, gradually regained his eyesight. And what he saw brought
him to earth. It was the district minister, he himself, he who had
preached so beautifully in the Lapp mountains, who stood there and
listened to him.
As if frightened out of his senses, Andy jumped down from the stone and
fled into the woods.
Maglena more than wanted to follow his example, so terrible did it
seem to be left alone among so many fine people. For two well-dressed
women had just come, while Andy was preaching. They wore hats with
silk ribbons, and on their hands mittens that looked like lace, and
beautiful ‘bought’ dresses: shoes with elastic sides too.
And it was the district minister himself who had come with them.
Maglena knew him at once, because as he stood leaning against a fir
trunk, listening to Andy, something kind and bright shone from his eyes
just as it did up in the little chapel. He appeared ‘revered’ and high.
Maglena felt so little, so little, when he looked at her. But she could
not get away and dart after Andy, because Sylvia sat in her lap and
wanted to be baby. Sylvia was so slender and small, and had such thin
soft clothing that Maglena could easily hold her, yes, even rock her a
wee bit, and keep the mosquitoes from her delicate, pale little face.
When Sylvia caught sight of the strangers, she sat up. She called to
one of them, her mother, who at once was told that she had found a
‘best friend’ up here at the mountain dairy who was never going to
leave her.
Now that the sermon was over, and the ‘minister’ fled to the woods,
life and uproar followed among the children.
Elsa, the eldest daughter at the parsonage to which the dairy farm
belonged, was suddenly depressed when she saw her mother so early. She
and the other children had made many bright plans about the reception
they were going to give their parents and Aunt Gerda when they came.
And now they came upon them and not a thing had been done to honor
them. Now Elsa scarcely had time to greet them before she set off
for the house as fast as her legs could carry her. She thought with
horror of the awfully untidy room being seen by mother. Mother wasn’t
_supposed_ to come to the dairy until Sunday _evening_! For her, as
well as for her four sisters, Angela, Ingegard, Gertrude, and Viva, who
too had just got up, it still seemed morning.
However, Elsa contrived to get the always inseparable twins, Ingegard
and Gertrude, with her. And as they, with united strength, rushed
about, made the beds, swept, put fresh boughs on the floor, cleaned
the hearth, put wood on the fire, and the coffee-pot over the fire,
they had everything clean and in order when mother and the rest came in.
The joy of seeing the parents was, however, a little mixed. For now
there would be an end to the wonderful week’s visit at the mountain
dairy. The cows and goats were now to be driven home for haying time,
and the dairy would be closed for several weeks.
When people and cattle were to be there again in the late summer, the
children would already have begun their lessons and reading. No chance
then to get up to the dairy, still less to stay there.
But now it was best to forget lessons and a shut-in life. Now there
was plenty to do. Pelle had just come home with a string of trout that
he had caught while watching the cattle. Elsa cleaned the fish quickly
and skillfully and then fried them in a pan over the coals. Ingegard
cleaned potatoes, washed wooden bowls, and scoured knives.
Angela set the table that opened up and became large enough for them
all. She decorated it with wild flowers and leaves that Sylvia,
Maglena, and Viva brought home from the woods, while Pelle cleaned
outside, raked, and carried away fallen leaves and withered boughs that
had done service on the floor.
Gertrude toiled in the milk-room. She carried out bowls of clotted
milk, and goats’-milk cheese, and broke up the hard coarse bread into
pieces more suitable for the table. The butter jar, full of yellow
butter with an almost flowery fragrance, she put in the center of
the table. With the support of Ingegard, she won this place of honor
for it, though Angela fussed about such a vulgar way of setting the
table. Yellow brown whey butter and fresh ‘cow-cheese’ that was so dry
that one choked on it, though when old and ripe it became soft and
delicious, were also set forth.
At length, far out in the woods, a beautiful trilling yodeling and the
jubilant blasts of a horn could be heard.
Apparently Karl and Sara were together and had been all day. The twins
thought this _quite strange_ and that it would have been better and
more seemly if Sara at least had stayed at the farm until she really
had them awake, even if it did take all day.
CHAPTER XXXVI
AGAIN A MESSAGE FROM MOTHER
Out in the woods the minister walked alone. As usual he wanted to find
the crystal-clear spring that he knew was near by. As he approached
the spring silently in the soft moss, he thought he heard the sound of
sobbing.
Deeply sympathetic, he hurried toward the sound. He advanced a couple
of steps, but stopped in wonder and perplexity.
The boy whom he had just seen and whose courageous appearance as a
preacher out in the woods had awakened his wondering surprise, lay on
the ground close beside the spring, shaking with sobs.
‘What good is it that I stand and make a show for people we don’t
belong to?’ sobbed the boy. ‘What good is it that I dragged the little
girls and all of us away from the mountains and the little gray house
there? If we had stayed, even if it had been in the poor-house, we
would never have known that there was anything better for us, and
thought it should be so. But now I don’t think so any more, ’cause now
I want something better. I must know something about everything on
earth, and be like the fine children here. And now it is only heavy and
sad inside of me. I don’t want to walk the roads and be ashamed when I
go into a house, and haven’t anything to trade for food. I _don’t want_
to be a beggar that no one likes and cares anything about, no matter
what he says. I don’t want to stand on a stone in the woods and preach.
I want to stand in a church and tell people what mother taught us. But
I just have to walk and walk; it burns worse and worse inside me, as if
I never do what is right, even though I want to. Dear God, please, care
for me so that I will like to do what you want and so that I don’t do
like little Magnus and just want to forget it.’
Andy looked up in terror. He thought he heard a rustle, saw the shadow
of a person.
It was the minister who now approached him.
Ashamed and so crushed that he scarcely dared look up, Andy came to his
feet. He seized the tin pitcher Anna-Dea had thrown to him when she saw
him set off into the woods toward the spring.
Andy plunged the pitcher into the spring and saw with repulsion his
swollen face twistedly reflect itself in it.
‘Will you give me a drink before you fill the pitcher?’ said the
minister’s calm, gentle voice.
Andy looked up in surprise into the trustworthy, deep dark eyes that so
kindly, so understandingly were turned upon him.
He did not know how it happened, but he found himself quite fearlessly
wandering down the winding path toward the marsh with the man who just
now, when he saw him from ‘the pulpit,’ had given him such a painfully
humiliating feeling of shyness.
The two sat a long time on the mossy stone down by the marsh, the older
man with the kind heart, sensitive to all trouble and need, and the
boy with the exhausted, shrinking, meditative spirit, now suddenly so
open-hearted and cheerful.
Andy could now, as if he were talking to God, talk about everything
that had weighed upon him. He could describe simply and clearly the
uneasiness he had continually felt about the little brothers and
sisters before he found such homes for them as he knew mother would
have liked. He talked about her love and suffering and death, and about
how he had promised her to look after the children and the goat.
Yes, at last Andy could talk, without shyness or fear, even about what
had grown up innermost in him. He thought it had been in him since the
first time, when he was only a few years old, that he went to an early
Christmas morning service at the little chapel at Barren Moor. Andy now
found words to express his absolutely impossible desire to be, _some
time, a minister_.
The already won friend sat now silent and thoughtful. He sat a long
time without, as before, encouraging the boy to open his heart with
serious simple questions or little sympathetic exclamations.
At last he stood up. A holy resolution seemed to shine in his eyes.
‘It is not the work of people or an accident that put you in my way,
boy. It is God’s work and will. I believe that we ought to follow the
road that your mother’s prayers have opened for you.’
Andy looked up astonished, as if blinded by lightning.
‘You will have your bringing-up with us, and study at the college in
the city. I am sure of God’s blessing in the undertaking both for you
and for us. We, my wife and I, will be mother and father to you, always
wishing you well. You will be a good son to us, and _that is settled_.
God bless you, my boy!’
Andy felt a hand steadily, solemnly, placed on his head.
Foster-father and foster-son stood together out in the woods by the
sleeping marsh in the summer night that was as light as day.
Andy felt himself in a dream. It seemed to him that God’s angels would
appear out of the sheer hazy veil that hung over the marsh. He would
not have been surprised if he had seen mother’s face in the soft mist,
smiling as brightly as when she had left them with words of blessing.
CHAPTER XXXVII
MAGLENA
Maglena came running into the cottage, but stopped, silent and
embarrassed, just inside the door. She was relieved to see Andy, quite
calm and at home, sitting on a three-legged stool in front of the fire.
It was still very painful for her to stay in the room where the
wonderfully dressed ladies sat at the table in long white jackets, just
now looking only at her.
The minister, who had been in there talking with the ladies, went out
just as Maglena came in.
‘Here we have her, as if “sent for.”’ With these words the minister
laid his hand softly, with a gentle pat, on the child’s head, before he
went out with a kind, meaning glance at his wife.
‘Yes, here we have her, quite right,’ said one of the ladies, the one
the children called Aunt Gerda, and who was Sylvia’s mother. In fact
she looked a great deal like Sylvia, with soft fair hair like hers, and
white and pale, but with a gentle, kind face.
She drew Maglena, who resisted warily, with her, and sat down with
her arms caressingly about the stranger-child, who stared at her
unbendingly.
‘Do you care anything for Sylvia?’ she asked in a soft voice.
Maglena reddened painfully. She was very uncomfortable, for she had not
the faintest idea what this ‘care for’ meant.
‘Sylvia’s mother wonders if you like her little girl, and I have
already seen that you do,’ said the other lady, the mother of the other
children.
She looked so full of fun and happy that Maglena suddenly smiled at
her, though she felt so ill at ease with the other lady.
‘Yes, I think Sylvia is nice enough,’ murmured Maglena.
‘Do you have anything against being her little friend and sister?’ went
on Sylvia’s mother. She spoke tenderly, almost pleadingly.
‘Instead of the one that has so much fun up with God?’ asked Maglena,
and looked up with big earnest eyes at the fine lady who had such sad
ones, and who now, to Maglena’s astonishment and grief, seemed about to
cry.
‘Well, but mother is there too, so the little girl must be happy,’ said
Maglena in a low voice, intending to comfort the unhappy mother.
‘Do you think so, you little darling?’ whispered the lady. She lifted
Maglena up on her lap and leaned her head against her bright curly hair.
Maglena sat as straight as a pin. She looked stupid and uncomfortable
and wanted to slide down from her unaccustomed place.
But Andy, to whom she appealed in her anxiety, gave her a warning
glance. It meant that he felt sorry for the nice lady, and that she
should sit still with her as long as she wanted to hold such a big girl
in her lap.
‘Talk to the child, Octavia,’ said the softly weeping, sorrowful
mother. She set Maglena carefully down on the floor.
The other ‘happy lady’ with the laughing blue eyes stretched out her
hand to Maglena. She kept her arm around her waist while she told her
that Sylvia’s mother, together with her herself and her husband, had
decided that Maglena should go with them to Stockholm as _their own
child_!
‘Is Andy coming too?’ whispered Maglena, her eyes wide with fear.
‘Andy is coming to us. He is already our boy, so that is all settled.’
She nodded gayly and kindly to Andy, who raised his head from his work,
pushed his hair from his forehead, and sent a bright glance, beaming
with happiness, back again.
The minister’s wife smiled contentedly. Her husband had taken two poor
boys before to bring up. But neither of them had shown such wisdom,
such a pure sensitive spirit, and such a clear mind as she had already
observed in this mountain and ‘famine-years’ son.
‘You know, my little chick, you will be just as well off in Sylvia’s
home. And if you consider what is really fine, you’ll be better off.’
‘You’ll have Eva’s doll house,’ said Sylvia’s mother eagerly. She had,
while she held Maglena in her arms, learned to love her and thought
with hope and joy that the healthy, simple little mountain child would
have a good and strengthening influence on her own beloved little girl.
‘A doll house, just think,’ repeated the other, ‘with little rooms, and
small, small tables and chairs and pans and plates. Can you imagine
that?’
‘And a barn and cows and goats too?’
The lady looked surprised. She had never heard of that sort of doll
house.
‘We have _real_ horses instead, little one, and you will ride with us
in a carriage.’
‘Do you have a goat like Golden Horn?’ asked Maglena in a rather
anxious, plaintive voice.
‘A goat? No, that we haven’t. No one in the city has goats,’ continued
the nice lady, confused and perplexed.
‘Andy said once that the king had thousands of goats, and I thought
that he lived in the city, and that the goats had golden horns and that
I could watch them for the king.’
‘The king hasn’t any goats. But when you’re riding in the carriage
you’ll see the king himself, and will bow prettily to him.’
‘When I think about it, Octavia,’ she continued, turning to the
minister’s wife, ‘I don’t see why Sylvia and little Maglena here
shouldn’t have a goat. There is room for it down in the stables. The
coachman will take care of it. Old Bergstrom will do anything to please
Sylvia.’
‘If we have a goat, I’ll go. But we can take care of it ourselves,
Sylvia and I.’
Mistress Gerda smiled happily over the little one’s confidence and
already intimate way of saying ‘Sylvia and I.’
‘You’re right in that, and it will be good for Sylvia. Goat’s milk
is wonderful for tuberculosis,’ said the minister’s wife, who, with
reason, was worried about her friends’ only child. ‘Besides,’ she
continued, ‘you have your pretty country place where the island will be
a fine place for the goat to graze all summer. Oh, yes, that could all
be arranged very well. But now you’re going to hear something else that
I know you’ll think is wonderful.’
The minister’s wife, who saw how hard Maglena found it to retain her
self-possession, mostly, she knew, at the thought of separation from
Andy, thought it best to give the child something else to think about.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
ALL THE SEVEN FROM THE LITTLE GRAY COTTAGE
Little Maglena now heard the same story that Andy had just heard,
partly from the minister, and partly from his wife, the story of
himself and his brothers and sisters. Their long journey from the
mountains with the goat was known in the settlements, moving and
strange as it was. The forester from Bear Heath had told it when he was
down there to mark the trees to be cut in the woods of the parish. He
had talked to his old friends at the parsonage about ‘his little girls’
and spoken long and often about the happiness and joy he and his wife
felt at having the children.
‘You understand, Maglena, that the forester had never talked like that
before, because he’d never had any children before.’
‘It was our little girls, Martha-Greta and Brita-Carrie, that became
their children!’ cried Maglena. ‘Goodness gracious, are they alive?’
she continued, in her eagerness forgetting altogether her usual shyness.
‘Alive! Well, I should think so! They are well, and the sweetest,
dearest little girls. Their mother has grown so well and happy and
strong since they came to the house. She has woven cloth for dresses
for them, red and white, and blue and white cotton dresses that she
herself has sewn for holidays and every day.’
Maglena stood with her arms resting on the table, looking out of the
window, her eyes shining with wonder and delight. It was as if she had
just heard a fairy tale.
‘Yes, and then that dear mother has made them big aprons of coarser
home-woven cloth. They wear these when they play or work. Can you guess
what such little youngsters can do in the way of work?’
‘Oh, everything and anything,’ answered Maglena with such conviction
that, if it had been necessary, she could have given the little ones a
testimonial that they were fully capable of any household work.
‘Everything?’ repeated the minister’s wife with an amused smile that
almost offended Maglena.
‘Yes, they can sweep and put wood on the fire, and rock the cradle and
carry kindling wood and wash bowls and wooden spoons and--and----’
Maglena lost her breath when she came to name all the little ones’
accomplishments.
‘Aren’t they useful in the barnyard too?’
Maglena looked surprised and a little thoughtful.
‘Well, they haven’t had to be in the barnyard, the little ones.
Martha-Greta hasn’t been able to get over the high thresholds either
without help, she’s too little, and, besides, I’ve never wanted any
help,’ she added proudly.
‘Well, now you shall hear that the little girls will be useful in
the barnyard too when they’re a little bigger, for, will you believe
it?--they each have a goat. The goats live in a pretty new little
goat-house.’
‘I’ve never heard anything like it! I wonder what the goats there are
named?’ asked Maglena. Her eyes sparkled.
‘You shall hear that too. The forester talked about that quite
particularly. One was named Gold--Gold--what was it now?’
‘Golden Horn, of course,’ enlightened Maglena. ‘Andy, the goat is named
Golden Horn like ours.’
Maglena could not stand still. She hopped backward and forward and
clasped her hands, twisted and turned to look at Andy, at the lovely
lady who smiled so gently and understandingly at her, and who now
helped her to ask what the other goat was named.
‘The other is called White Tongue.’
‘Then she has two white tongues under her nose instead of a beard.
That’s a good mark for milking goats, that is,’ remarked Maglena with
an experienced dairymaid’s sure air.
‘And then, you must know, the little girls have two dolls. They are
so nice that they have porcelain heads with thick porcelain braids,
although they are tiny babies and lie in a little cradle.’
‘And I know that they sing a cradle-song, “hennenly Tana.”’
Maglena nearly burst into tears at the last words.
The minister’s wife hastened to add:
‘Anna-Lisa and Maglena are their names, those pretty babies.’
‘Andy, do you hear, how wonderful those little girls are?’
‘And what’s more. They have made themselves three boys out of sticks of
wood, and dressed them, and they call them Andy, Per-Erik, and Magnus.
Have you ever heard anything like it?’
Maglena turned silently toward her brother with a face that glowed with
rapture.
He looked at her just as silently and meaningly. Happiness and
contentment shone out of his eyes too.
‘You shall hear even more that you’ll like.’
‘Can the little girls sew roses on mittens, maybe?’
‘I don’t think so, and now the story about the little girls is at an
end. But now I want to tell you that the forester had also been at a
big farm.’
‘Maybe at the one where we left Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik?’ interrupted
Maglena, full of expectation.
‘You’ve guessed right. You may be sure that Anna-Lisa is like the
daughter of the house there. She has a little green spinning-wheel of
her own. When the forester came into the big kitchen in the evening,
Anna-Lisa sat there spinning flax on her little spinning-wheel, while
the mistress was spinning wool for winter clothes for her husband and
all three children. A fire burned in the fireplace. Two little boys----’
‘And they were--oh, I know they were Per-Erik and little Karl,’
interrupted Maglena and gave a jump of eagerness.
‘I almost think they were so named. They came in with each an armful of
dry wood that they threw on the fire so that the room became so light
and bright. They sang together so happily, the mistress and Anna-Lisa
and then a maid who was spinning too.’
‘That was Brita.’
‘I can’t remember what they sang. It was something about a goatherd.’
‘And the king took the goatherd so brown,
And made her his queen with a crown.’
‘Andy, _that_ was the song they sang; it is sixteen stanzas long, and
it’s such a jolly and funny song.’
‘That was it exactly! Well, you may be sure that the forester was happy
when he recognized Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik. They were so pleased with
the girl at the farm that they had given her a little blue churn so she
could churn butter Saturdays. And down in the barnyard she had a whole
row of goats to take care of. They stood in small stalls and ate dry
leaves that she put in the mangers for them before she milked them. The
biggest and finest goat there too was named Golden Horn. Wasn’t that
strange? The little kid beside her was called Motherlike. Do you know
why?’
‘Because he was like his mother of course,’ answered Maglena, again
cheerful and alert.
‘He had been out with Per-Erik and the other little boy too, the
forester. They had built a little sawmill down by a stream that is full
in the spring. The wheels had turned with such force that it was a joy
to see it.’
‘Yes, Per-Erik always liked to build things in the water,’ smiled
Maglena, proud and pleased. ‘And he was always after father to play,
when he was well, before he died.’
‘The master had made a little violin for the boys too,’ continued the
minister’s wife, ‘and a little cart to carry wood in, and little rakes
so that they could be along like real men when they raked the fields
after haying, and help keep the yard nice and clean.’
‘Per-Erik is well off now,’ said Maglena, not without a certain regret
in her voice.
‘And do you know, they had two colts in the stable there. Per-Erik, who
stood in high favor with the master because he is a dear boy who has
put life into his own boy, let him have his way, and one of the colts
is named Andy and the other Magnus.’
‘Andy, have you ever in the world heard the like? But I suppose he was
terribly washed and combed, wasn’t he?’ added Maglena, cautiously,
almost with sympathy in her voice.
‘That you may be sure of. The forester said that he had never seen
such shiny-faced children as those three at the farm.’
Maglena and Andy smiled understandingly at one another.
‘Well, now the story about Anna-Lisa and Per-Erik is over. But now we
come to something that perhaps you don’t remember; as much as you have
wandered about and as many places as you have been in, perhaps you have
altogether forgotten some one who made shoes?’
‘Oh, Andy! The Spectacle Man!’ Maglena laughed aloud in joy. ‘He lives
in a little gray house. Is he alive? Never have I heard anything so
wonderful!’
‘You dear little warm-hearted child.’ The lovely lady smiled at
Maglena. All the while she followed with the liveliest interest and
eagerness the strange child’s expressions. The child was to be her own,
and every word, every cadence of her voice had a meaning for her.
‘Yes, he is said to live in a little gray house, that shoemaker. Once
in a bad snowstorm this winter, when the wolves crept about in the
woods----’ continued the lady.
‘There _wasn’t_ any snowstorm, but it came,’ interrupted Andy earnestly.
‘The wolves didn’t come either, ’cause mother asked God to follow us
all the time; you know that, Andy,’ came from Maglena.
‘I haven’t said anything else either,’ remarked Andy patiently. ‘But
we were the ones that came there.’
‘Does he still live in the little gray cottage below the mountains, the
Spec--Spec-- Andy, what was his name for real people?’
Maglena turned again with burning eagerness toward her who had so much
to tell that was remarkable.
Andy looked up a second from his work. He was cutting kindling wood.
‘Ladd-Pelle was his name.’
‘Well, one evening there came seven small children to this Ladd-Pelle,
quite hungry.’
‘Terribly,’ sighed Maglena.
‘But we had had food earlier that day, remember that, girl,’ came
Andy’s earnest voice.
‘They were pretty tired too, I imagine, those children,’ continued the
minister’s wife, who had no objection to the children’s forgetting
their shyness and saying what they thought, so that she could learn to
know them better.
‘Not so very,’ said Maglena, influenced by her brother’s words. ‘It was
mostly our legs that were tired, and our feet that were blistered. But
we weren’t tired ourselves when we came into the house. No-o-o, ’cause
we were scared.’
Maglena stared before her. She smiled when she thought that they had
been afraid of _that_ man in the little gray house. So little had they
known about what there was to be afraid of.
‘They had a goat along.’
‘Golden Horn, of course,’ nodded Maglena, deeply interested in the
story.
‘The children had had to stay over because of the snowstorm, and they
had made the house so neat, washed windows, scrubbed, spread out rag
carpets, whitewashed the fireplace.’
‘It was Anna-Lisa who thought of that,’ announced Andy.
‘Yes, because she couldn’t stand dirt, Anna-Lisa, and there weren’t any
women-folk in the house, so it was quite awful in the room.’
‘But we got lots of food, and a place to sleep too, all of us and
Golden Horn, remember that, girl!’
‘Have I said that I’ve forgotten all that!’ resented Maglena eagerly.
‘It can’t be nice where there aren’t any women-folk, so that’s nothing
to be surprised at.’
‘No, no,’ agreed Andy, quite convinced that his sister was right,
though that point of view was not flattering to him, since he wasn’t
‘women-folk.’
‘Tell them about the flower in the window, Octavia.’
‘That’s true! Ladd-Pelle had a cactus in a fine pot in his window.’
‘Oh, my sweet little cactus, that I carried in the knapsack and loved
so that we had it with us that first day!’
‘Just that cactus, of course. They say that the window at Ladd-Pelle’s
is always shining now, so that the cactus will thrive, you see. When
the window was clear, Ladd-Pelle himself saw how dreary the house
looked inside and in all the corners. So now he keeps the whole house
nice with a clean floor and white fireplace, even without women-folk.’
‘Do you hear, Maglena!’ said Andy in an almost solemn tone of voice.
Maglena ‘heard’ as she stood with a look at the same time proud and
crushed.
‘But now you shall hear something that is even more wonderful. Well,
Andy has heard it before.’
Maglena tramped about and twisted, red and eager. Still more wonderful
than what she had already heard!
‘Can you imagine, Maglena, _he has bought a goat_, a big fine goat, and
a good milker, that the forester bought for him down in Smaland, where
they still have fine goats.’
‘And her name is Golden Horn, as sure as I stand here!’ screamed
Maglena, altogether beside herself with delight. ‘He wanted to buy
our Golden Horn, and he said that if you always had milk to cook with
and for your coffee, you wouldn’t have to drink all the time. So you
see, Andy, it was a good thing after all that you took us away. You’ve
blamed yourself and been sorry sometimes that you took us and Golden
Horn with you out into the country. But now see how good it was. You
needn’t think that Pelle would have thought of keeping the house clean
if he hadn’t seen our Golden Horn.’
‘Well, if Golden Horn wasn’t exactly the cause of keeping the house
clean, she had a reason for being, anyway,’ smiled the minister’s wife.
‘You were pretty short-sighted, Andy,’ she added earnestly, ‘if you
didn’t realize that it was a good thing in many ways that you left the
little gray house when it was empty. Not only for all of you. Children
who have learned what is right and wrong, from father and mother, carry
_blessings with them_ wherever they go in the world.’
‘It came over me just once in a while, when the little ones suffered,
that I had been foolish,’ Andy excused himself, ashamed and depressed,
as happy and grateful as he was. ‘It seemed that I had been so stupid,
and that I had dragged them into something that I couldn’t help them
out of. But now everything is fine. I don’t have to worry about Maglena
either now.’
Maglena’s anxious frightened look came back at Andy’s words.
‘Sylvia and you shall come up here in the summer,’ said the fine lady,
‘or else Andy will come down to us.’
Maglena bowed her head. All light had disappeared from her face, which
had smiled and beamed with happiness a moment before.
‘My dear little child,’ said the foster-mother and drew Maglena gently
toward her. ‘Andy will have many sisters here, and foster-brother too.
My little Sylvia is all alone without any little sister.’
‘Maybe mother has sent me to her, like when we went in to Ladd-Pelle,’
murmured Maglena to herself. A deeply thoughtful look had come over
her; she looked inquiringly up into the fine lady’s eyes, who no longer
seemed only ‘fine’ to her, but also so mild and gentle. Maglena was
suddenly certain that mother had sent her to be a sister to the little
one who had no sister. So she didn’t resist any more or hold herself
as stiff as a pin, but cuddled, soft in body and spirit, into the arms
that opened to take her.
Father and mother and home and sister were therefore found also for
Maglena, who had stood alone, the last of the seven poor little ones,
who, in a year of famine, deserted, without father or mother, had left
the little gray house one bitterly cold winter morning when the fire on
the hearth had gone out.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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