Chapter II: Part 2

Thinka straightened up her overgrown blond figure and tried to smile. She had the difficult task of hiding a plaster on one side of her chin, where a day or two before she had fallen down through the cellar trap-door in the kitchen.

Soon the three gentlemen sat comfortably at their cards, each one smoking his pipe and with a glass of hot arrack punch by his side. Two moulded tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks stood on the card-table and two on the folding-table; they illuminated just enough so that you could see the almanac, which hung down by a piece of twine from a nail under the looking-glass, and a part of the lady's tall form and countenance, while she sat knitting in her frilled cap. In the darkness of the room the chairs farthest off by the stove could hardly be distinguished from the kitchen door--from which now and then came the hissing of the roasting meat.

"Three tricks, as true as I live--three tricks, and by those cards!" exclaimed Captain Rönnow, eager in the game.

"Thanks, thanks," turning to Inger-Johanna who brought a lighted paper-lighter to his expiring pipe. "Th-a-nks"--he continued, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out, his observant eyes again being attracted by her. Her expression was so bright, the great dark eyes moving to and fro under her eyebrows like dark drops, while she stood following the cards.

"What is your name, once more, my girl?" he asked absently.

"Inger-Johanna," she replied with a certain humor; she avoided looking at him.

"Yes, yes.--Now it is my turn to deal! Your daughter puts a bee in my bonnet, madam. I should like to take her with me to Christiania to the governor's, and bring her out. We would make a tremendous sensation, that I am sure of."

"At last properly dealt! Play."

With her hands on the back of her father's chair, Inger-Johanna gazed intently on the cards; but her face had a heightened glow.

Rönnow glanced at her from one side. "A sight for the gods, a sight for the gods!" he exclaimed, as he gathered together with his right hand the cards he had just arranged, and threw them on the table. "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant manages dummy--you understand, madam," nodding to her with significance. "Heavens! Peter, that was a card to play.--Here you can see what I mean," he continued. "Trump, trump, trump, trump!" He eagerly threw four good spades on the table, one after another, without paying any attention to what followed.

The expression of the lady's face, as she sat there and heard her innermost thoughts repeated so plainly, was immovably sealed; she said, somewhat indifferently, "It is high time, children, you said good-night; it is past your bed-time. Say good-night to the gentlemen."

The command brought disappointment to their faces; not obeying was out of the question, and they went round the table, and made curtsies and shook hands with the captain and the lieutenant.

The last thing Jörgen noticed was that the lieutenant turned round, stretched his neck, and gaped like Svarten as they went out.

Their mother straightened up over her knitting-work. "You used to visit my brother's, the governor's, formerly, Captain Rönnow," she ventured. "They are childless folk, who keep a hospitable house. You will call on them now, I suppose."

"Certainly I shall! To refrain from doing that would be a crime! You have, I should imagine, thought of sending one of your daughters there. The governor's wife is a person who knows how to introduce a young lady into the world, and your Inger-Johanna--"

The captain's wife answered slowly and with some stress; something of a suppressed bitterness rose up in her. "That would be an entirely unexpected piece of good fortune; but more than we out-of-the-way country folk can expect of our grand, distinguished sister-in-law. Small circumstances make small folk, more's the pity; large ones ought to make them otherwise.--My brother has made her a happy wife."

"Done. Will you allow an old friend to work a little for your attractive little Inger?" returned Captain Rönnow.

"I think that Ma will thank you. What do you say, Gitta? Then you will have a peg to hang one of them on. It can't be from one of us two that Inger-Johanna has inherited her beauty, Ma!" said Captain Jäger, coughing and warding off his wife's admonitory look; "but there is blood, both on her father's and mother's side. Her great-grandmother was married off up in Norway by the Danish queen because she was too handsome to be at court--it was your grandmother, Ma! Fröken von--"

"My dear Jäger," begged his wife.

"Pshaw, Ma! The sand of many years has been strewed over that event."

When the game was again started, the captain's wife went with her knitting-work to the card-table, snuffed first one candle and then the other, leaned over her husband, and whispered something.

The captain looked up, rather surprised. "Yes, indeed, Ma! Yes, indeed--'My camel for your dromedary,' said Peter Vangensten, when he swapped his old spavined horse for Mamen's blooded foal. If you come with your arrack from Holland and farther India, then I put my red wine direct from France against it--genuine Bordeaux, brought home and drawn straight from the hogshead! There were just two dozen the governor sent us with the wagon the autumn Jörgen was baptized.--The two farthest to the left, Ma! You had better take Marit with you with the lantern. Then you can tell the governor's wife that we drank her health up here among the snow-drifts, Rönnow."

"Yes, she is very susceptible to that kind of thing, Peter Jäger."

When the captain's wife came in again, she had the stiff damask tablecloth on her arm, and was accompanied by a girl who helped move the folding-table out on the floor. It was to be set for supper, and the card-table must be moved into the best room, across the hall, which was now warm.

"Can you wait, Ma, till the rubber is played?"

Ma did not answer; but they felt the full pressure of her silence; her honor was at stake--the roast veal.

And they played on silently, but at a tearing pace as with full steam.

Finally the captain exclaimed, while Ma stood immovable with the cloth in the middle of the floor, "There, there, we must get away, Rönnow!"

In the chamber above, impatient hearts were hammering and beating.

While Jörgen went to sleep with the image before him of his lieutenant who gaped like Svarten when he came out of the stable door into the light, and after Torbjörg had put out the candle, the sisters stole out into the great, cold, dark hall. There they all three stood, leaning over the balustrade, and gazing down on the fur coats and mufflers, which hung on the timber wall, and on the whip and the two sabre sheaths and the case of bottles, which were dimly lighted by the stable lantern on the hall table.

They smelt the odor of the roast as it came up, warm and appetizing, and saw when the guests, each with his punch-glass in his hand and with flickering candle, went across the hall into the large room. They heard the folding-table moved out and set, and later caught the sound of the clinking of glasses, laughter, and loud voices.

Every sound from below was given a meaning, every fragment of speech was converted into a romance for their thirsty fancy.

They stood there in the cold till their teeth chattered and their limbs shook against the wood-work, so that they were obliged to get into bed again to thaw out.

They heard how the chairs made a noise when the guests rose from the table, and they went out in the hall again, Thinka and Inger-Johanna,--Thea was asleep. It helped a little when they put their feet upon the lowest rail of the balustrade, or hung over it with their legs bent double under them.

Thinka held out because Inger-Johanna held out; but finally she was compelled to give up, she could not feel her legs any more. And now Inger-Johanna alone hung down over the balustrade.

A sort of close odor of punch and tobacco smoke frozen together rose up through the stairs in the cold, and every time the door was opened and showed the heavy, smoky, blue gleam of light in the great room, she could hear officers' names, fragments of laughter, of violent positive assertions, with profane imprecations by all possible and impossible powers of the heavens above and the earth beneath, and between them her father's gay voice,--all chopped off in mince-meat every time the door was shut.

When Inger-Johanna went to bed again, she lay thinking how Captain Rönnow had asked her twice what her name was, and then again how at the card-table he had said, "I should like to take her with me to the governor's wife; we would make a tremendous sensation." And then what came next, "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant plays dummy,"--which they thought she did not understand.

The wind blew and howled around the corner of the house, and whistled down through the great plastered chimney-pipe in the hall--and she still, half in her dreams, heard Captain Rönnow's "Trump! trump! trump! trump!"

The next day Ma went about the house as usual with her bunch of keys; she had hardly slept at all that night.

She had become old before her time, like so many other "mas," in the household affairs of that period--old by bearing petty annoyances, by toil and trouble, by never having money enough, by bending and bowing, by continually looking like nothing and being everything--the one on whom the whole anxious care of the house weighed.

But--"One lives for the children."

That was Ma's pet sigh of consolation. And the new time had not yet come to the "mas" with the question whether they were not also bound to realize their own personal lives.

But for the children it was a holiday, and immediately after breakfast they darted into the great room.

There stood the card-table, again moved against the wall, with the cards thrown in a disorderly pile over the paper on which the score had been kept. It had been folded up and burned on one end for a lighter; and by its side, during a preliminary cleaning, the three pipes were lying, shoved aside. One window was still open, notwithstanding the wind blew in so that the fastening hook rattled.

There was something in the room--a pungent odor, which was not good; no, but there was, nevertheless, something about it--something of an actual occurrence.

Outside of the window Great-Ola stood with his hands on the shovel in the steep snow-drift, listening to Marit's account of how the captain had left a broad two-kroner piece for drink money on the table up in the guest-chamber and the lieutenant a shilling under the candlestick, and how the mistress had divided them among the girls.

"The lieutenant was not so butter-fingered," suggested Marit.

"Don't you know that a lieutenant would be shot if he gave as much as his captain, girl," retorted Great-Ola, while she hurried in with the keys of the storehouse and the meal-chest.

From the captain's sleeping-room the sound of his snoring could be heard for the whole forenoon. The guests did not go to bed, and started at six o'clock in the morning, when the post-boy came to the door--after the second bottle, also, of Rönnow's Indian arrack had been emptied, and a breakfast with whiskey, brawn, and the remnants of the roast veal had strengthened them for the day's journey.

But the thing to be done was to have a good time on the holiday. The sisters bustled about in the hall with their skis, and Jörgen was trying how the outer steps would do for a ski slide.

Soon they were out on the long steep hill behind the cow-barn--the ski-staff in both hands in front for a balance, their comforters streaming out behind their necks. In the jump Inger-Johanna lost her balance and almost--no, she kept up!

It was because she looked up to the window of the sleeping-room to see if her father appreciated her skill.

He was walking about and dressing. Ma had at last, about dinner time, ventured to wake him up.

_Chapter II_

Two days before Christmas Great-Ola with Svarten and his load was expected from Christiania, where he went twice a year, St. John's Day and Christmas, for the household supplies. To-day was the ninth day; but in sleighing like this, when the horse's feet struck through at every step, no one could be sure of anything.

The load, met on the run, far down the slippery, slushy hill, by the children and the barking, one-eyed Pasop, came along in the afternoon, while Svarten, even in his exertions on the steep part of the hill, neighed and whinnied with pleasure at being home again and longing to get into the stall by the side of Brunen. He had had quite enough of the journey, and worked himself into a foam in the harness to get over the Gilje hill.

Marit, the cook, and Torbjörg were out in the porch before the kitchen; the three girls and Jörgen stood wholly absorbed by the load and the horse, and the captain himself came down the stairs.

"Well, Great-Ola, how has Svarten pulled through? Sweaty and tired, I see! Did you get my uniform buttons? Ah, well! I hope you did not forget the tobacco!--And my watch, could they do anything with that?--Have you the bill?--Well, then, you must put up Svarten--he shall have an extra feed of oats to-day. What? What have you got there?"

Besides the bill, Great-Ola had taken out of his inside vest pocket a letter wrapped up in paper, blue postal paper, with a beautiful red seal on it. The captain looked at it a moment with surprise. It was the writing of the governor's wife and her seal in the wax, and without saying a word he hastened in to his wife.

The load from the city, the great event of the half year, occupied the attention of the whole household. Its contents interested all, not the children alone, and when Great-Ola, later in the evening, sat in the kitchen, where he was treated as a guest on account of his return home, and told about his trip to the city and about Svarten and himself, what miracles they had wrought on such and such hills--and the load weighed this time at least two hundred pounds more than the last--then there was a sort of glamor about him and Svarten, too.

One evening he had even found his way in a snowstorm, and once the salt-bag was forgotten, and then Svarten actually would not stir from the inn-yard, but lashed his tail at every cut of the whip, and kept looking back, until the boy came running out of the hall and shouted out about the bag, then off he started willingly enough.

The captain had gone in and had wandered up and down in the room for a while with the letter of the governor's wife in blue postal paper in his hand. He looked very much offended at Ma, when she seemed to think more about the load from the city than about his letter. She only suggested gently that they must talk about all that in the evening.

"All that--you say, Ma!--that Inger-Johanna is invited down there next winter--and we have Rönnow to thank for it. That is short and clear enough, I should think! What? What?" he roared out impatiently. "Is it not plain?--or have you some notions about it?"

"No--no, dear Jäger!"

"Well, then you should not delay the whole unloading of the goods with your quiet sigh, full of importance, and your secret meanings which always make me mad. You know I hate it! I go straight to the point always!"

"I was merely thinking about your uniform coat, whether the tailor has sent the pieces with it, you know--"

"You are right, you are right, Gitta," and out he rushed like a flash.

The unpacking went on in the kitchen, before the spice closet with its numerous compartments, where raisins, prunes, almonds, the different kinds of sugar, allspice, and cinnamon, were each put into their own places. Now and then fell a tribute, a prune, two almonds, three raisins, to each of the children; and it could not be denied that this load from the city was like a foretaste of Christmas Eve.

At first the captain was intensely interested in getting hold of the ink bottles, the tobacco, and the strong wares which were to be kept in the cellar--everything else must be put aside for them. And then he flew in and out, with one bill or another in his hand and a quill pen full of ink, to compare with the general bill which his wife had nailed up on the upper door of the spice closet.

"Ma, can you conceive such extortion?" stopping suddenly before the bill, which still finally was always found to be right, and then turning thoughtfully round again, while he dried his pen in his chocolate-colored every-day wig.

His plethoric, vociferous, somewhat confused nature always became furious when he saw a bill; it operated like a red cloth on a bull, and when, as now, all the half year's bills came storming down on him at once, he both roared and bellowed. It was an old story for his wife, who had acquired a remarkable skill in taking the bull by the horns.

The wrongs, which thus he did _not_ suffer, seemed nevertheless to awaken an increasing storm of resentment in him. With a violent tug at the door-latch, and his wig awry, he would come suddenly in, exclaiming,--"Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, seventeen pence!--seventy-five--dollars--three shillings--and seventeen pence!--it is almost enough to make one crazy. And so you ordered citron--citron,"--he put on a falsetto tone, and laughed out of pure rage. "He, he, he, he!--now have we the means for that? And then, almond soap for the guest-chamber!" This last came in a deep, suppressed, gloomy bass. "I cannot understand how you could have hit on that!"

"My dear, that was thrown in. Don't you see that it isn't carried out for anything?"

"Thrown in--oh, thrown in--yes, there you see how they cheat! Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, and seventeen pence--plainly that is enough to be frightened at. Where shall I find the money?"

"But you have already found it, Jäger!--Remember the servants," she whispered quickly. It was a quiet prayer to put off the rest of the outburst till later in the afternoon, between themselves.

The captain's various ecstatic flashes of passion about the bills went over the house that afternoon like a refreshing and purifying thunderstorm before Christmas. The children, cowed and tortured, took refuge during the storm under the protection of their mother, who warded off the blast; but when his step was again heard in the office, they went on, just as persevering and inquisitive as before, peeping into and shaking out the bags in order to find a raisin or two or a currant that had been forgotten, collecting the twine, looking after the weight, and cutting up the bar soap.

During all these anxieties the tall form of the mistress stood in uninterrupted activity, bowed like a crane over the box with the city wares, which had been lifted in on the kitchen floor. Jars, willow baskets filled with hay, small bags, and an infinity of packages in gray wrappers, tied up with twine, small and great, vanished by degrees into their different resting-places, even to the last, the bag with the fine wheat flour, which was brought in by Great-Ola and put by itself in the meal-chest in the pantry.

When the spice closet was finally shut, the captain stood there for the twentieth time. With the air of a man who had been made to wait and been tormented long enough, he gently tapped her on the shoulder with his fingers and said, rather reproachfully, "It really astonishes me, Gitta, that you don't pay more attention to the letter we have received to-day."

"I haven't been able to think of anything else than your troubles with the bills, Jäger. Now I think you might taste the French brandy this evening, to see if it is good enough for the Christmas punch. Cognac is so dear."

"That's a good idea, Gitta!--Yes, yes--only let us have supper soon."

The plates with oatmeal porridge and the blue milk in the cold cups were placed upon the table; they stood like black, dreary islands over the cloth, and presented no temptation to linger over the evening meal.

After the necessary part of it was swallowed and the children were sent upstairs, the captain sat, now quite cozy and comfortable, before the table, which was still extended, with his tobacco and his taste of toddy made of the French brandy, whose transformation into Christmas punch was going on in the kitchen, from which there was also heard the sizzling of the waffle-iron.

"Only strong, Ma,--only strong!--Then you can manage with the brown sugar.--Yes, yes," tasting of the wooden dipper which his wife brought in, "you can treat the sheriff to that with pleasure."

"Now Marit is coming in with the warm waffles,--and then it was this about the letter of the governor's wife.--You see, Jäger, we cannot send the child there unless we have her suitably fitted out; she must have a black silk confirmation dress, city boots and shoes, a hat, and other things."

"Black silk conf--"

"Yes, and some other dresses, which we must order in Christiania; there is no help for it."

Captain Jäger began to walk to and fro.

"So, so!--So, so! Well, if that is your idea, then I think we will decline the invitation with thanks."

"I knew that, Jäger! You would like to have the yolk, but as to breaking the egg, you hesitate."

"Break the egg? Break my purse, you mean."

"I mean, you can call in a part of the six hundred dollars you got with me. I have thought and reckoned it over. Inger-Johanna alone will cost us over one hundred dollars this year, and when Thinka is going to Ryfylke, we shall not get off with two hundred."

"Over two hundred dollars!--Are you crazy? Are you crazy--really crazy, Ma? I think you have a screw loose!" He made a sudden turn over the floor. "The letter shall rather go at once into the stove."

"Very well; you know that I think everything you do is sensible, Jäger."

He stopped, with the letter in his hand and his mouth half open.

"And the slight chance Inger-Johanna might have of being provided for, that perhaps is not so much to be taken into account. She is certainly the nearest relation. There is nothing in the way to prevent her being the heir also.--N-no, do as you will and as you like, Jäger. You probably see more clearly in this than I do.--And then you will take the responsibility yourself, Jäger,"--she sighed.

The captain crumpled the letter together, gave her a hasty glance like a wounded lion, and then stood awhile and stared at the floor. Suddenly he threw the letter on the table and broke out: "She must go!--But the cost of the campaign--the cost of the campaign, Ma, that, I learned in my strategy, must be borne by the enemy! And the governor's wife must naturally take care of her outfit there."

"The governor's wife, Jäger, must not pay for anything--not a bit--before she has decided if she will keep her. We must not be anxious to be rid of her; but _she_ shall be anxious to get her; and she must ask us for her, both once and twice, you understand."

That the winter was coming on was less noticed this year than usual. Two children were to be fitted out. Soon spinning-wheel and reel accompanied, in the short day and long evening, the murmur of the stove. Ma herself spun all the fine woof for the linsey-woolsey dresses. There was knitting, weaving, and sewing, nay, also embroidery on linen--"twelve of everything for each one." And in school hours in the office the captain worked not less zealously with the French grammar.

The stiffening cold frost, which blew about the house and cut like ice from every crack; the cold so fierce that the skin was torn off the hands when any one was unlucky enough to take hold of the latch of the outer door or of the porch without mittens; complaints of nail ache, when the children came in from out-of-doors; or else that the drinking-water was frozen solid in the tubs and pails, that the meat must be thawed out,--this was only what was usual in the mountain region. The doleful, monotonous howling and the long, hungry yelling of the wolves down on the ice could be heard from the Gilje hills both by day and by night. The road on the lake lasted a long time. It was there till long into the spring thaw, though worn, unsafe, and blue with its dirt-brown mudstreak.

But when it did disappear, and the ice was melted by the heat of the sun, there lay on the steep hill behind the house a long line of bleaching linen, so shining white that it seemed as if the snow had forgotten to go away there.

_Chapter III_

It was midsummer. The mountain region was hazy in the heat; all the distance was as if enveloped in smoke. The girls on the farm went about barefooted, in waists and short petticoats. It was a scorching heat, so that the pitch ran in sticky white lines down from the fat knots in the timber of the newly built pigsty, where Marit was giving swill to the hogs. Some sand-scoured wooden milk-pans stood on edge by the well, drying, while one or two sparrows and wagtails hopped about or perched nodding on the well-curb, and the blows of the axe resounded from the wood-shed in the quiet of the afternoon. Pasop lay panting in the shade behind the outer door, which stood open.

The captain had finished his afternoon nap, and stood by the field looking at Great-Ola and the horses ploughing up an old grassland which was to be laid down again.

The bumble-bee was humming in the garden. With about the same monotonous voice, Thinka and Inger-Johanna, sitting by the stone table in the summer-house over the cracked blue book-cover and the dog-eared, well-thumbed leaves, mumbled the Catechism and Commentary, with elbows and heads close to each other. They had to learn pages eighty-four to eighty-seven before supper time, and they held their fingers in their ears so as not to disturb each other.

There was darkness like a shadow just outside of the garden fence. But they saw nothing, heard nothing; the long passage of Scripture went way over on the second page.

Then there was a gay clearing of a throat. "Might one interrupt the two young ladies with earthly affairs?"

They both looked up at the same time. The light hop leaves about the summer-house had not yet entirely covered the trellis.

With his arms leaning on the garden fence there stood a young man--he might have been standing there a long time--with a cap almost without a visor over thick brown hair. His face was sunburned and swollen.

The eyes, which gazed on them, looked dreadfully wicked.

Neither of them saw more; for, by a common impulse at the phenomenon, they ran in utter panic out of the door, leaving the books spread open behind them, and up the steps in to Ma, who was in the kitchen buttering bread for lunch.

"There was a man standing--there was a man out by the garden fence. It was certainly not any one who goes around begging or anything like that."

"Hear what he has to say, Jörgen," said Ma, quickly comprehending the situation; "this way, out the veranda door. Appear as if you came of your own accord."

Both the girls flew in to the windows of the best room in order to peep out under the curtains.

He was coming in by the steps to the outer door with Jörgen, who suddenly vanished from his sight into the kitchen.

Little Thea stood in the door of the sitting-room with a piece of bread and butter, clutching the latch, and, holding the door half shut and half open, stared at him; she was altogether out of it.

"Is your father at home?"

"Yes, but you must go by the kitchen path, do you hear? And wait till we have had lunch; he is not going up to the office before that." She took him for a man who was going to be put on the roll.

"But I am not going to the office, you see."

Ma herself came now; she had managed to get her cap on in her hurry, but it was all awry.

"A young man, I see, who has perhaps come a long distance to-day. Please walk in."

Her smile was kind, but her eye underneath it was as sharp as an officer's review; here were holes and darns with coarse thread for the nonce and rents in abundance, and it was not easy to free herself from the suspicion of some questionable rover, especially when he dropped straight in through the door with the remark: "I come like a tramp from the mountain wilds, madam. I must make many excuses."

Ma's searching look had in the mean time broken through the shell. The white streak on the upper part of the forehead, under the shade where the skin had not been reddened by the sunburn, and his whole manner determined her to scrutinize him prudently. "Please sit down, Jäger is coming soon." She incidentally passed by the sewing-table and shut it. "Won't you let me send you a glass of milk in the mean time?"

A girl came in with a great basin, shaped like a bowl, and vanished again.

He put it to his mouth, noted with his eye how much he had drunk, drank again, and took another view.

"It is delightful--is not at all like the mistress of the house, for she seemed like sour milk, and"--he suppressed a sigh--"dangerously dignified."

He drank again.

"Yes, now one really must stop; but since and whereas--"

He placed the basin quite empty on the plate.

"Best to attack him at once. Dead broke, will you on my honest face lend me four--no, that does not sound well, better out with it at once--five dollars, so that I can get to Christiania?"

The small eyes twinkled quickly. If only the captain had come then! Some one was walking about out there.

He gazed abstractedly; he repeated his speech to himself. It was always altered, and now he stood again at the ticklish point--the amount. He considered if perhaps he only needed to ask for four--three?

There was a growling out in the hall; the dog rushed out, barking loudly. It was plainly the captain.

The young man rose hurriedly, but sat down again like a spring ready to jump up out of a chair: he had been in too great haste.

"In the parlor--some sort of fellow who wants to talk with me?" It was out on the stairs that some one was speaking.

A moment or two later, and the captain appeared in the door.

"I must beg you to excuse me, Captain. I have unfortunately, unfortunately"--here he began to stammer; bad luck would have it that one of the two young girls whom he had seen in the summer-house, the dark one, came in after her father; and so it would not do--"come over the mountain," he continued. "You will understand that one cannot exactly appear in the best plight." The last came in a tone of forced ease.

The captain at that moment did not appear exactly agreeably surprised.

"My name is Arent Grip!"

"Arent Grip!" rejoined the captain, looking at him. "Grip! the same phiz and eyes! You can never be the son of Perpetuum--cadet at Lurleiken? He is a farmer, or proprietor I suppose he calls himself, somewhere among the fjords."

"He is my father, Captain."

"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath, when the pipes sprung a leak."

Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.

"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down from the mountains. Sit down.--And what is now your--your occupation or profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around the floor.

"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here thus without knowing you--"

"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father also had trouble with his examinations."

"I have not the fractional part of my father's brains, but with what I have, they gave me this year _laudabilis praeceteris_."

"Son of my friend, Fin Arentzen Grip!" He uttered each one of the names with a certain tender recognition. "Your father was, all things considered, a man of good ability, not to say a little of a genius,--when he failed in his officer's examination, it was all due to his irregular notions. Well, so you are his son! Yes, he wrote many a composition for me--the pinch was always with the compositions, you see."

"And, Captain," began the young man again earnestly, now in a louder and more decided tone, "since I can thus, without further ceremony, confidently address you--"

"You can tell Ma," said the captain, when Inger-Johanna again came in with her taller, overgrown sister, "that it is Student Arent Grip, son of my old delightful comrade at the Military School."

The result of this last message was that the contemplated plate with a glass and bread and butter was changed to a little lunch for him and the captain, spread out on a tray.

The old bread-basket of red lacquer was filled with slices of black, sour bread, the crusts of which were cracked off. More's the pity, Ma declared, it had been spoiled in the baking, and the gray, heavy crust was due to the fact that so much of the grain on the captain's farm last year was harvested before it was ripe.

The student showed the sincerity of his forbearance of these defects through an absolutely murderous appetite. The prudential lumps of salt, which studded the fresh mountain butter with pearly tears in a superfluous abundance, he had a knack of dodging boldly and incisively, which did not escape admiring eyes; only a single short stroke of his knife on the under side of the bread and butter, and the lumps of salt rained and pattered over the plate.

"You will surely have some dried beef? I guess you have not had much to eat to-day. Go and get some more, Thinka. A little dram with the cheese, what? You can believe that we tested many a good old cheese in the den at your father's, and when we had a spree, we sent for it, and it circulated round from one party to another; and then the apples from Bergen which he got by the bushel by freighting-vessel from home! He was such a greenhorn, and so kind hearted--too confiding for such rascals as we! Oh, how we hunted through his closet and boxes!--and then we did our exercises at the same time; it was only his that the teacher corrected through the whole class." The captain emptied the second part of his long dram. "Ah!" He held his glass up against the light, and looked through it, as he was accustomed to. "But nevertheless, there was something odd about him, you know; you must see that such a one, straight from the country, does not fit in at once. Never forget when he first lectured us about perpetual motion. It was done with only five apples in a wheel, he said, and the apples must be absolutely mathematically exact. It was that which got out and ruined him, so people came to--yes, you know--comment on it, and make fun of him; and that hung on till the examination."

The student wriggled about.

The young ladies, who were sitting with their sewing by the window, also noticed how he had now forgotten himself; during the whole time he had kept one boot under the chair behind the other in order to conceal the sole of his shoes gaping wide open. They were in good spirits, and hardly dared to look at each other--son of a man who was called Perpetuum, was a cadet, and gave the cows a bath. Father was dreadfully amusing when there were strangers present.

"Not a moment's doubt that there were ideas--but there was something obstinate about him. To come, as he did, straight from the farm, and then to begin to dispute with the teacher about what is in the book, never succeeds well, especially in physics in the Military School. And you can believe that was a comedy."

"Then I will bet my head that it was not my father who was wrong, Captain."

"Hm, hm--naturally yes, his father to a dot," he mumbled--"Hm, well, you have got _praeceteris_ all the same,--will you have a drop more?" came the hospitable diversion.

"No, I thank you. But I will tell you how it was with my father. It was just as it was with a hound they had once at the judge's. There was such blood and spirit in him that you would search long to find his equal; but one day he bit a sheep, and so he had to be cured. It was done by locking him up in a sheepfold. There he stood, alone before the ram and all the sheepfold. It seemed to him splendid fun. Then the ram came leaping at him, and the dog rolled heels over head. Pshaw, that was nothing; but after the ram came tripping--before he could rise--all the fifty sheep trip--trip--trip, over him; then he was entirely confused. Again they stood opposite each other, and once more the ram rushed in on the dog, and trip--trip--trip--trip, came the feet of the whole flock of sheep over him. So they kept on for fully two hours, until the dog lay perfectly quiet and completely stunned. He was cured, never bit a sheep again. But what he was good for afterwards we had better not talk about--he had been through the Military School, Captain."

When he looked up, he met the dark, intense eyes of the mistress fixed on him; her capped head immediately bent down over the sewing again.

The captain had listened more and more eagerly. The cure of the hound interested him. It was only at the last expression he discovered that there was any hidden meaning in it.

"Hm--my dear Grip. Ah! Yes, you think that. Hm, can't agree with you. There were skilful teachers, and--ho, ho,--really we were not sheep--rather wolves to meet with, my boy. But the cure, I must admit, was disgraceful for a good dog, and in so far--well, a drop more?"

"Thank you, Captain."

"But what kind of a road do you say you have been over, my boy?"

With the food and the glass and a half of cordial which he had enjoyed, new life had come into the young man. He looked at his clothes, and was even so bold as to put his boots out; a great seam went across one knee.

"I certainly might be set up as a scarecrow for a terror and warning to all those who will depart from the highway. It was all because at the post station I met a deer-hunter, an excellent fellow. The chap talked to me so long of what there was on the mountain that I wanted to go with him."

"Extremely reasonable," muttered the captain, "when a man is paying for his son in Christiania."

"I had become curious, I must tell you, and so started off for the heart of the mountains."

"Is he not even more aggravatingly mad than his father,--to start in haphazard over the black, pathless mountain?"

"The track led over the débris and stones at the foot at first for five hours. But I don't know what it is upon the mountain; it was as if something got into my legs. The air was so fine and light, as if I had been drinking champagne; it intoxicated me. I should have liked to walk on my hands, and it would have been of no consequence to any one in the whole wide world, for I was on the summit. And never in my life have I seen such a view as when we stood, in the afternoon, on the mountain crest,--only cool, white, shining snow, and dark blue sky, peak on peak, one behind the other, in a glory as far as the eye could reach."

"Yes, we have snow enough, my boy. It stands close up against the walls of the house here all winter, as clear, white, and cold as any one could wish. We find ourselves very well satisfied with that,--but show me a beautiful green meadow or a fine field of grain, my boy."

"It seemed to me as if one great fellow of a mountain stood by the side of another and said: You poor, thin-legged, puny being, are you not going to be blown away in the blue draught, here on the snow-field, like a scrap of paper? If you wish to know what is great, take your standard from us."

"You got _praeceteris_, you said, my man? Yes, yes, yes, yes! What do you say if we get the shoemaker to put a little patch on your shoes to-night?"

It was as much as an invitation to stay all night!--Extremely tempting to postpone the request till next day. "Thank you, Captain, I will not deny that it might be decidedly practical."

"Tell the shoemaker, Jörgen, to take them as soon as he has put the heel-irons on those I am to have for the survey of the roads."

Oh! So he is going away, perhaps early to-morrow morning; it must be done this evening, nevertheless! Now, when the daughters were beginning to clear off the table, it was best to watch his chance.

The captain began walking up and down the floor with short steps. "Yes, yes, true! Yes, yes, true! Would you like to see some fine pigs, Grip?"

The student immediately sprang up. The way out! He grabbed his cap. "Do you keep many, Captain?" he asked, extremely interested.

"Come!--oh, it is no matter about going through the kitchen--come out a little while on the porch steps. Do you see that light spot in the woods up there? That is where we took the timber for the cow-house and the pigsty, two years ago."

He went out into the farmyard bare-headed.

"Marit, Marit, here is some one who wants to see your pigs. Now you shall be reviewed. There are a sow and seven--you see. Ugh, ugh, yes. Hear your little ones, Marit!--But it was the brick wall, you see. Right here was a swamp hole; it oozed through from the brook above. And now--see the drain there?--as dry as tinder."

Now or never the petition must be presented.

"And now they live like lords all together there," continued the captain.

"All seven of the dollars--what am I saying, all five of the pigs."

"What?"

"Here is your hat, father!"--Jörgen came from the house--"and there are some of the people down from Fosse standing there and waiting."

"So? We will only just look into the stable a little."

There stood Svarten and Brunen, just unharnessed, still dripping wet and with stiff hair after the work at the plough.

"Fine stall, eh?--and very light; the horses don't come out of the door half blind. Ho, Svarten, are you sweaty now?"

There was a warm and pleasant smell of the stable--and finally--

"Captain, I am going to make a re--"

"But, Ola," interrupted the latter, "see Brunen's crib there! I don't like those bits. It can't be that he bites it?"

"Ha, ha, ha--no, by no means." Ola grinned slyly; he was not going to admit in a stranger's presence that the captain's new bay was a cribber!

The captain had become very red; he pulled off his cap, and hurriedly walked along with it in his hand--"such a rascal of a horse-trader!"

He no longer looked as if he would listen to a request.

Out of the afternoon shade by the stable walls the two men just spoken of appeared.

"Is this a time of day to come to people?" he blurted out. "Ah well--go up to the office."

At this he strode over the yard, peeped into the well, and turned towards the window of the sitting-room.

"Girls! Inger-Johanna--Thinka," he called in a loud tone. "Ask Ma if that piece of meat is going to lie there by the well and rot."

"Marit has taken it up, we are going to have it for supper," Thinka tried to whisper.

"Oh! Is it necessary on that account to keep it where Pasop can get it?--Show the student down into the garden, so that he can get some currants," he called out of the door, as he went up by the stables to his office.

Arent Grip's head, covered with thick brown hair, with the scanty flat cap upon it, could now be seen for a good long time among the currant bushes by the side of Thinka's little tall, blond one. At first he talked a great deal, and the sprightly, bright, brown eyes were not in the least wicked, Thinka thought. She began to feel rather a warm interest in him.

He found his boots in the morning standing mended before his bed, and a tray with coffee and breakfast came up to him. He had said he must be off early.

Now it all depended on making his decisive leap with closed eyes in the dark.

When he came down, the captain stood on the stairs with his pipe. Over his fat neck, where the buckle of his military stock shone, grayish locks of hair stuck out under his reddish wig. He was looking out a little discontentedly into the morning fog, speculating on whether it would settle or rise so that he would dare order the mowing to go on.

"So you are going to start, my boy?"

"Captain, can--will you lend me--" in his first courage of the morning he had thought of five, but it sank to four even while he was on the stairs, and now in the presence of the captain to--"three dollars? I have used up every shilling I had to get to Christiania with. You shall have them by money order immediately."

The captain hemmed and hawed. He had almost suspected something of the sort yesterday in the fellow's face--yes, such a student was the kind of a fellow to send back a money order!

There began to be a sort of an ugly grin on his face. But suddenly he assumed a good-natured, free and easy mien. "Three dollars, you say?--If I had three in the house, my boy! But here, by fits and starts in the summer, it is as if the ready money was clean swept away." He stuck his unoccupied hand in the breast of his uniform coat, and looked vacantly out into the air. "Ah! hm-hm," came after a dreadfully oppressive pause. "If I was only sure of getting them back again, I would see if I could pick up three or four shillings at any rate in Ma's household box--so that you could get down to the sheriff or the judge. They are excellent people, I know them; they help at the first word."

The captain, puffing vigorously at his pipe, went into the kitchen to Ma, who was standing in the pantry and dealing out the breakfast. She had the hay-making and the whole of the outside affairs upon her shoulders.

He was away quite a little time.

"Well, if Ma did not have the three dollars after all! So I have got them for you. And so good-by from Gilje! Let us hear when you get there."

"You shall hear in a money order," and the student strode jubilantly away.

It is true that at first Ma had stopped for a moment and pinched her lips together, and then she had declared as her most settled opinion that, if the captain was going to help at all, it must be with all three. He did not seem one of those who shirked everything--was not one who was all surface--and it would not do at all to let him beg at the judge's, the sheriff's, and perhaps the minister's, because he could not get a loan of more than three shillings at Gilje.

From time to time Thinka told of all that she and the student had talked about together.

"What did he say then?" urged Inger-Johanna.

"Oh, he was entertaining almost all the time; I have never heard any one so entertaining."

"Yes, but do you remember that he said anything?"

"Oh, yes, he asked why you were reading French. Perhaps you were to be trained to be a parrot, so that you could chatter when you came to the city.

"So,--how did he know that I was going to the city?"

"He asked how old you were; and then I said that you were to be confirmed and to go there. He was very well acquainted at the governor's house; he had done extra writing, or something of that sort, at the office, since he had been a student."

"That kind of acquaintance, yes."

"But you wouldn't suit exactly there, he said; and do you know why?"

"No."

"Do you want to know? He thought you had too much backbone."

"What--did he say?"

She wrinkled her eyebrows and looked up sharply, so that Thinka hastened to add: "Whoever comes there must be able to wind like a sewing thread around the governor's wife, he said; it would be a shame for your beautiful neck to get a twist so early."

Inger-Johanna threw her head back and smiled: "Did you ever hear such a man!"

* * * * *

Thinka had gone to Ryfylke. Her place at the table, in the living-room, in the bed-chamber, was empty air. The captain started out time after time to call her.

And now the last afternoon had come, when Inger-Johanna was also going away.

The sealskin trunk with new iron bands stood open in the hall ready for packing. The cariole was standing in the shed, greased so that the oil was running out of the ends of the axles, and Great-Ola, who was to start the next morning on the three days' journey, was giving Svarten oats.

The captain had been terribly busy that day: no one understood how to pack as he did.

Ma handed over to him one piece of the new precious stuff after the other; the linen from Gilje would bear the eye of the governor's wife.

But the misfortune of it was that the blood rushed so to Jäger's head when he stooped over.

"Hullo, good! I don't understand what you are thinking of, Ma, to come with all that load of cotton stockings at once! It is this, this, this I want."

Naturally, used to travelling as he was--"But it is so bad for you to stoop over, Jäger."

He straightened up hurriedly. "Do you think Great-Ola has the wit to rub Svarten with Riga liniment on the bruise on his neck and to take the bottle with him in his bag? If I had not thought of that now, Svarten would have had to trot with it. Run down and tell him that, Thea.--Oh, no!" he drew a despairing breath; "I must go myself, and see that it is done right."

There was a pause until his footfall had ceased to creak on the lowest step. Then Ma began to pack with precipitous haste: "It is best to spare your father from the rush of blood to his head."

The contents of the trunk rose layer upon layer, until the white napkin was at last spread over it and covered the whole, and it only remained to sit upon the lid and force the key to turn in the lock.