CHAPTER X.DEPARTURE FROM TORJEDAHL.

“Og Trolde, Hexer, Nysser i hver Vraae.”Finn Magnussen.And Witches, Trolls, and Nysses in each nook.

“Og Trolde, Hexer, Nysser i hver Vraae.”

Finn Magnussen.

And Witches, Trolls, and Nysses in each nook.

“Hallo! what is the matter now?” said the Captain, who had been out with his gun that morning, and on his return caught sight of the Parson sitting disconsolate on the river’s bank. By the waters of Torjedahl we sat down and wept. “What has gone wrong?”

“Why, everything has gone wrong,” said the Parson peevishly; “look at my line.”

“You do seem to have lost your casting line, certainly.”

“Yes, I have, and half my reel line beside.”

“Very tinkerish, I dare say, but do not grieve over it; put on a new one and hold your tongue about it; no one saw you, and I promise not to tell.”

“How can you be so absurd?” said the Parson, “look at the river, and tell me how we are to fish that; just look at those baulks of timber floating all over it. I had on as fine a fish as ever I saw in my life,—five-and-twenty pounds if he was an ounce, when down came these logs, and one of them takes my reel line, with sixty yards out, and cuts it right in the middle.”

“Well, that is provoking,” said the Captain, “enough to make a saint swear, let alone a parson; but, hang it, man, it is only once in the way. Come along, do not look behind you; I am in a hurry to be at it myself, I came home on purpose, I was ashamed to waste so glorious a fishing day as this in the fjeld.”

“That is just the thing that annoys me,” said the Parson;“it is, as you say, a most lovely fishing day,—I never saw a more promising one; and I have just heard that these logs will take three days floating by at the very least, and while they are on the river I defy the best fisherman in all England to land anything bigger than a graul.”

“Why,” said the Captain, “have the scoundrels been cutting a whole forest?”

“This is what Torkel tells me,” said the Parson; “he says that in the winter they cut their confounded firs, and when the snow is on the ground they just square them, haul them down to the river or its tributaries, where they leave them to take care of themselves, and when the ice melts in the spring, down come the trees with it. But there are three or four lakes, it seems, through which this river passes—that, by-the-by, is the reason why it is so clear; and, as the baulks would be drifting all manner of ways when they got into these lakes, and would get stranded on the shores instead of going down the stream, they make what they call a boom at or near the mouth of the river, that is to say, they chain together a number of baulks, end-ways, and moor them in a bight across the river, so that they catch everything that floats. Here they get hold of the loose baulks, make them into rafts, and navigate them along the lakes, launching them again into the river at the other end, and catching them again at the next boom in the same way. They have, it seems, just broken up the contents of one of these booms above us. It will take three days to clear it out, and another day for the straggling pieces.”

“Whew!” said the Captain, “three blessed days taken from the sum of our lives; what on earth is to be done?”

“Well,” said the Parson, “that is exactly what we must see about, for it is quite certain that there is nothing to be done on the water. Before I began grumbling I sent off Torkel to look for Birger—for we must hold a council of war upon it. O! there is Birger,” said he, as they crossed the little rise which forms the head of the Aal Foss and came in sight of the camp and the river below it; “Torkel must have missed him.”

“Hallo!” said Birger, who was with Piersen in one ofthe boats, fishing up with his boat-hook the back line of the långref, and apparently he had made an awkward mess of it—“hallo there! get another boat and come and help me, these baulks have played Old Scratch with the långref; it has made a goodly catch, too, last night, as far as I can see, but we want more help to get it in.”

The Parson had the discretion to keep his own counsel, but the fact was, it was he who was the cause both of the abundant catch and of the present trouble. The small eels had been plaguing them, for some nights successively, by sucking off and nibbling to pieces baits which they were too small to swallow, and thus preventing the larger fish from getting at them. The Parson had seen this, and had set his wits to work to circumvent them. By attaching corks to the back line, he had floated the hooks above the reach of the eels, which he knew would never venture far from the bottom, while pike, gös, id, perch, the larger eels, and occasionally even trout, would take the floating bait more readily when they found it in mid-water.

This would have done exceedingly well, had he looked at it early in the morning; that, however, he had not exactly forgotten, but had neglected to do. Time was precious, and he was unwilling to waste it on hauling the långref. Jacob, whose business it was to haul it, had been sent down to Christiansand on the preceding day, with two of the boatmen, for supplies, and had not yet returned; and the Parson, holding his tongue about his experiment, and proposing to himself the pleasure of hauling the långref when the mid-day sun should be too hot for salmon-fishing, had gone out early with his two-handed rod. In the meanwhile the baulks had come down, and the very first of them, catching the centre of the floating bight, had cut it in two, and had thus permitted the whole of the Parson’s great catch of fish to entangle themselves at their pleasure.

p. 124.

It was thesedisjecta membrathat Birger was busying himself about; the task was not an easy one; and if it were, the guardsman was not altogether a proficient. But, even when the reinforcement arrived, there was nothing to be done beyond lifting the whole tangle bodily into the boat, releasingthe fish from the hooks, and then, partly by patience, partly by a liberal use of the knife, to get out the tangle on shore. The further half gave them the most trouble to find; it had been moored to a stone, and the back line had been strong enough to drag it some way down the river before it broke. It was, however, at last discovered and secured, and the catch was of sufficient magnitude to ensure a supply of fish, notwithstanding the logs.

“Stop a minute,” said the Captain, as the boats’ heads were put up the stream on their return; “we have not got all the långref yet, I am sure; I see another fish; just pull across that ripple, Parson, a few yards below the end of that stranded log. Yes, to be sure it is, and a salmon, too, and as dead as Harry the Eighth. Steady there! hold water!” and he made a rake for the line with his boat-hook. “Why, what have we got here? it is much too fine for the långref. As I live, it is your own line. To be sure; here it runs. Steady! Let me get a hold of it with my hand, it may not be hitched in the wood firmly, and if it slips we shall lose it entirely. That will do: all right. That must be the log that broke you; it must have stranded here after coming down the Aal Foss, with the fish still on it—and—hurrah! here is the fish all safe—and, I say, Parson, remarkably fine fish it is, certainly! not quite twenty-five pounds, though,”—holding up the fish by the tail, and measuring it against his own leg; for his trousers were marked with inches, from the pocket-button downwards,—a yard measure having been stitched on the seam. “You have not such a thing as a steelyard, have you?”

The Parson, laughing—rather confusedly, though,—produced from his slip pocket the required instrument.

“Ah! I thought so, ten pounds and a half; the biggest fish always do get away, that is certain, especially if they are not caught again; it is a thousand pities I put my eye on this one. I have spoilt your story?”

“Well, well,” said the Parson, “if you have spoilt my story, you have made a good one for yourself, so take the other oar and let us pull for the camp.”

“Birger,” said the Captain, when the boats had been made fast, and the spoils left in the charge of Piersen, “Torkel has been telling the Parson that we are to have three days of these logs. If the rascal speaks the truth, what is to be done by us fishermen?”

“The rascal does speak the truth in this instance, I will be bound for it,” said Birger; “he knows the river well, and besides, it is what they do on every river in Norway that is deep enough to float a baulk.”

“What is to be done, then? there is no fishing on the river while this is going on.”

“I will tell you what we can do,” said Birger; “two or three days ago—that day when I returned to the camp so late—if you remember, I told you that I had fallen in with a lonely lake in the course of my rambles. There was a boat there belonging to a sœter in the neighbourhood, which Piersen knew of, and I missed a beautiful chance at a flight of ducks. However, that is neither here nor there; the people at the sœter told me that the great lake-char was to be found there; so the next day I sent Piersen, who understands laying lines if he does not understand fly-fishing, to set some trimmers for them. I vote we shoot our way to the lake, look at these lines, get another crack at the ducks, and make our way to the Toftdahl (which, if the map is to be trusted, must be somewhere within reach), fish there for a day, shoot our way back again, and by that time the wooden flood will be over.”

“Bravo, Birger,” said the Captain, “a very promising plan, and here, in good time, comes Commissary-General Jacob with the supplies. I see his boat just over that point, entangled among a lump of logs. I vote we take him with us; no man makes such coffee. I have not had a cup worth drinking since you sent him down the river.”

“You cannot take the poor fellow a long march to-day,” said the Parson, considerately, “he has just been pulling up the stream from Christiansand.”

“He pull! is that all you know of Jacob? I will venture to say he has not pulled a stroke since he started;look at the rascal, how he lolls at his ease, with his legs over the hamper, while the men are half in the water, struggling their way through the obstacles.”

“I see the scamp,” said the Parson; “upon my word, he puts me in mind of what the nigger observed on landing in England; man work, horse work, ox work, everything work, pig the only gentleman; Jacob is the only gentleman in our expedition.”

“I admire that man,” said Birger; “that is the true practical philosophy, never to do anything for yourself if you can get other people to do it for you. But I think those fellows had better make haste about it. I have known such a hitch of timber as that bridge the whole river, from side to side, in ten minutes; they accumulate very rapidly when they once take ground—ah! there goes the boat free; all right; but I certainly began to tremble for my provisions.”

“Well, then, we will take gentleman Jacob,” said the Captain, “I cannot give up my coffee.”

“I think so,” said Birger; “we will leave our three boatmen here in charge of the camp; Tom, Torkel, and Piersen can carry the fishing-rods and our knapsacks, which we must pack in light marching order. Jacob shall provide for the kitchen, and we will each of us take a day’s provisions in our havresacs, and our guns on our shoulders; the odds are, we knock over grouse and wild fowl, by the way, enough to supply us nobly. And even if we do not meet with sport, we shall at all events have a pleasant pic-nicking trip, and see something of the country, while the Parson, who is so fond of open air, may indulge himself with sleeping under a tree, and contemplating the moon at his ease.”

Torkel, who had come up while they were watching Jacob’s progress, and had learnt their plans, informed them of a sœter which lay nearly in their proposed course, and in which he had himself often received hospitality.

“Well, then,” said the Captain, “that will do for us, and we will leave the Parson, if he prefers it,

“His hollow tree,His crust of bread and liberty.”

“His hollow tree,

His crust of bread and liberty.”

“You may laugh,” said the Parson, “but the time willcome when you will find out certain disagreeables in a Norwegian dwelling, which may make you think with less contempt on the hollow tree.”

“The Parson is of the same mind as the Douglas,” said the Captain, “he likes better to hear the lark sing, than the mouse squeak.”

“I like clean heather better than dirty sheep-skin,” said the Parson.

“And musquitoes better than fleas,” added the Captain.

“Bother the musquitoes: I did not think of them.”[18]

“They will soon remind you,” said Birger, “if we happen to encamp near standing water.” And he went on packing his knapsack to the tune of “Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot,” which he whistled with considerable taste and skill.[19]

Arrangements, such as these, are soon made; the three boatmen were left in charge of the camp, with full permission to get as drunk as they pleased; and, before Jacob had well stretched his legs, which had been cramped in the boat, he was stretching them on the mountain-side, marching a good way in the rear of the party, and grumbling as he marched.

The mountains, which, all the way from Christiansand, hem in the river, so that not even a goat can travel along its banks, at Mosse Eurd and Wigeland recede on both sides, forming a sort of basin; and here, in a great measure, they lose their abrupt and perpendicular character. Close by thewater-side, there are a hundred, or two, of acres of inclosed ground comparatively flat, and either arable or meadow; not by any means in a ring fence, but spots cribbed here and there from the fjeld, which looks more like a gentleman’s park than anything else, with these little paddocks fenced out of it. The houses, too, are quite the picturesque houses that gentlemen in England ornament their estates with, so that the untidy plank fences seemed altogether out of character with the scenery. What one would look for here, is the neat park palings of England, or its trim quickset hedges.

Beyond this, the ground becomes more broken and wooded, but without losing its parkish character; it is something like the forest grounds of the South Downs in England, only broken into detached hills and deep rises, with, occasionally, a bare ridge of rock forcing its way through the short green turf. The forest was mostly birch, with a few maples and sycamores, and, here and there, a fir; but every tree big enough for a timber stick, had long ago been floated down to the boom at Christiansand. The character of the whole scene was prettiness rather than beauty. The mountains, however, were no lower than they had been further down the river; it was as if their perpendicular sides had, in some antediluvian age, given way, and that, in the course of centuries, the fragments had become covered with trees and verdure.

Among these broken pieces of mountain it was extremely easy for the traveller to lose his way; there was not the vestige of a path, that is to say, a path leading to any place to which he could possibly want to go. The grass was particularly good and sweet there, and sheep and cows are intensely conservative in their idiosyncracy; so stoutly had they kept up the principle ofstare super antiquas vias, that the appearance was as if the whole region was thickly inhabited and intersected with foot-paths in every direction, while every animal that helps to make them rings its own individual bell, and carries its own individual brand, but pastures in uncontrolled liberty. A cow is a very good guide to a lost man, for, if he has patience to wait till evening,she is sure to feed her way to the sœter to be milked; but woe to the man who puts his trust in bullocks or in sheep; they feed at ease, and roam at pleasure, till the frosts and snows of approaching winter bring them home to the fold, the stall, and the salting-tub.

Much of the shrubbery appearance of the scene is produced by the numerous plants of the vaccinium tribe, the bright glossy leaves of which look like myrtle; and the blue aconite, and the gentian, and the lily of the valley, flowers which we seldom meet with in England, absolutely wild, and the familiar leaves of the raspberry, and black currant, suggest ideas of home, while the turf on which the traveller treads, looks as if it had been mown by the gardener that very morning.

The course, though varied by quite as many ups and downs as there were ins and outs, was, upon the whole, continually ascending; and, as the higher regions were attained, and the facilities of transport diminished, the tall stately fir began to assert its natural supremacy among the northern sylva. Still, however, there was enough of birch, and even of the softer woods, to diversify the foliage, and preserve the park-like aspect. Heather, of which the Parson had anticipated making his couch, there was none; but, on the other hand, there was no furze to irritate the shins, or brambles to tear the clothes. The latter does grow in Norway, and is much more prized for its fruit than either raspberry or strawberry, but the former cannot stand the winters. Linnæus is said to have sat for hours in delighted contemplation of an English field of furze in full bloom, and the plant is generally seen in Swedish conservatories to this day, or set out in pots as oranges and myrtles are with us.

The mid-day sun had scattered the clouds of the morning, as, in truth, it very generally does on a Norway summer day, and, shining down in patches of brilliant light through the openings, added to the beauty of the scene, and diminished in an equal proportion all regrets at leaving the Torjedahl behind; for it was quite evident that, exceptin the Hell Fall, or the pools, little or nothing could be done on so bright a day, had the baulks been entirely out of the question.

It was an hour or two past noon when they arrived at the ridge which divides the valley of the Torjedahl from that of the Aalfjer—not that ridge is the proper expression, for the ground had, for some miles, become so nearly level that, were it not for a little rill, whose line of rushes had been for some time their guide, they would not have known whether they were ascending or descending. The country still preserved its character of beauty, but its features had gradually become more tame, so that the inequalities which, in the beginning of their journey had looked like fragments of mountains, were now rounded and regular, like so many gigantic mole-hills.

Between two of these, the turf of which was green and unbroken to the summit, and shorter and more velvety, if that were possible, than any they had passed over, was the source of the rill, a black, boggy, rushy, uninviting bit of ground, but covered with myrica bushes, which diffused through the still air their peculiarly aromatic and refreshing scent; in the centre of this was a deep still hole—it could be called nothing else—it certainly was not a spring head, for there was not a bubble of springing water; it was perfectly still and motionless, and looked absolutely black in its clearness.

It was a welcome halt to all, for the sun was hot and the way was long. The well-head was a noted haunt of the dwarfs or Trolls, indeed it was said to penetrate to the centre of the earth, and to be the passage through which they emerged to upper air.

This was the reason why, though everything around was scorching and dropping in the withering heat, and though the unshaded sun fell full upon the unprotected surface, the water was at all times very cold, and yet in the hardest winter no ice ever formed upon it—its cold was that of the well of Urdar which waters the roots of Yggdrassil, the tree of life; no frost can bind these waters, neither can they be polluted with leaves or sticks, for a dwarfsits continually on guard there, to keep open the passage for his brethren.

“Well,” said Birger, “I can readily believe that these are the waters of life, I never met with anything so refreshing, it beats all the brandy in the universe.”

Jacob put in no protest to this heresy, but expressed a practical dissent by applying his mouth to a private bottle and passing it to Tom.

The Captain was proceeding to wash his face and hands in the well-head, but the men begged him not to pollute it; the rill below, they said, did not so much signify.

The place had been noted by Birger for a halt, and right glad were they all to disembarrass themselves of their respective loads, and to stretch themselves in various attitudes of repose picturesque enough upon the whole, under the great white poplars whose restless leaves fluttered over head though no one could feel the breeze that stirred them, and shaded the fairy precincts of the haunted well.

The Parson threw himself on his back upon the turf with his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt-collar wide open, his arms extended, and his neckerchief, which he had removed, spread over his face and bare neck to keep off the musquitoes. He was not asleep exactly, nor, strictly speaking, could it be said that he was awake; he was enjoying that quiet dreamy sort of repose, that a man thoroughly appreciates after walking for five or six hours on a burning hot summer’s day. His blood was still galloping through his veins, and he was listening to the beat of his own pulses.

“This is very delightful, very,” he said, in a drowsy drawling voice, speaking rather to himself than to Torkel. “A very curious sound, one, two, three, it sounds like distant hammers.”

“Oh, the Thousand!” said Torkel, “where are we lying?”

The Parson, when he threw himself down on the hill side, had been a great deal too hot and tired to pay much attention to his couch, beyond the evident fact that the turfwas very green and inviting, and that it contained no young juniper or other uncomfortable bedding: roused by Torkel’s observation, he sat upright, and seeing nothing very remarkable except a good rood of lilies of the valley at his feet, the scent of which he had been unconsciously enjoying, and which did not look at all terrible, stared at him. “Well,” said he, “what is the matter? where should we be lying?”

“I do not know,” said Torkel, “that is, I do not know for certain; but did you not say you heard hammers? Stay,” he said, looking as if he had resolved to do some desperate deed—“yes, I will, I am determined,” and he took a piece of clay that was sticking on his right boot, and having patted it into the size of a half-crown, put it on his head and dashed his hat on over it. Then shading his eyes with his hand, he looked fixedly at the hill, as if he were trying to look through it. “No,” said he, “I do not see anything, I hope and trust you are mistaken.”

“What can you be about?” said the Parson impatiently, “have you found a brandy shop in the forest?”

“I thought it must be the Bjergfolk,” he said, “when you heard the hammers. I never can hear them myself, because I was not born on a Saturday, and I thought perhaps you might have been. It is a very round hill too, just the sort of place they would choose, and they have not a great deal of choice nowadays, there are so many bells in the churches, and the Trolls cannot live within the sound of bells.”

“No?” said the Parson, “why not?”

“None of the spirits of the middle earth like bells,” said Torkel, “neither Alfs, nor Nisses, nor Nechs, nor Trolls, they do not like to think of man’s salvation. Bells call people to church, and that is where neither Troll nor Alf may go. They are sometimes very spiteful about it, too.”

“In the good old times, when it was Norway and Denmark, and we were not tied to those hogs of Swedes as we are now” (sinking his voice, out of respect to Birger, but byno means so much so that Birger could not hear him), “they were building a church at Knud. They pitched upon a highish mound near the river, on which to build it, because they wanted the people to see their new church, little thinking that the mound was the house of a Troll, and that on St. John’s eve, it would stand open supported on real pillars. Well, the Troll, who must have been very young and green, could not make out what they were going to do with his hill, and he had no objection whatever to a house being built upon it, because he reckoned upon a good supply of gröd and milk from the dairy. He could have seen but very little of the world above the turf not to know a church from a house. However, he had no suspicions, and the bells were put up, and the Pröbst came to consecrate. The poor Troll could not bear to see it, so he rushed out into the wide world, and left his goods and his gold and his silver behind him.

“The next day a peasant going home from the consecration saw him weeping and wringing his hands beyond the hearing of the bells, which was as near as he could venture to come. And the Troll told him that he was obliged to leave his country, and could never come back, and asked him to take a letter to his friends.

“I suppose the man’s senses were rather muzzy yet—he could hardly have had time to get sober so soon after the ceremony; but somehow or another he did not see that the speaker was a Troll, but took him for some poor fellow who had had a misfortune, and had killed some one, and fancied he was afraid of the Landamptman, particularly as he had told him not to give the letter to any one (indeed it had no direction), but to leave it in the churchyard of the new church, where the owner would find it.

“One would naturally wish to befriend a poor fellow in such a strait; so the man took the letter, put it into his pocket, and turned back.

“He had not gone far before he felt hungry, so he took out a bit of flad bröd and some dried cod that he had put into his pocket. They were all wet. He did not knowhow that could be; but he took out the letter for fear it should be spoiled, and then found that there was wet oozing out from under the seal. He wiped it; but the more he wiped it, the wetter it was. At last, in rubbing, he broke the seal, and he was glad enough to run for it then, for the water came roaring out of the letter like the Wigelands Foss, and all he could do he could only just keep before it till it had filled up the valley. And there it is to this day. I have seen it myself—a large lake as big as our Forres Vand. The fact was, the Troll had packed up a lake in the letter, and would have drowned church, bells, and all, if he had only sealed it up a little more carefully.”

“Well,” said the Parson, “this beats our penny-post; we send queer things by that ourselves, but I do not think anybody has ever yet thought of sending a lake through the General Post Office.”

“Is there not some story about Hercules cleaning out the Admiralty, or some such place, in a very similar way?” said the Captain.

“No,” said the Parson, “I never heard that the Admiralty has ever been cleaned out at all since the days of Pepys. If ever it is done, though, it must be in some such wholesale way as this—I do not know anything else that will do it.”

“The hill-men are not such bad fellows, though,” said Tom, on whom all this by-play about the Admiralty was quite lost, British seaman as he was; “and, by the way, Torkel, I wish you would not call them by their names, you know they do not like it, and may very well do us a mischief before we get clear of this fjeld. Many people say that there is no certainty of their being damned after all—our schoolmaster thinks they certainly will not, for he says he cannot find anything about damning Trolls in the Bible, and I am sure I hope it will not be found necessary to damn them, for they often do us a good turn. There was a Huusbonde in the Tellemark who had one of their hills on his farm that no one had ever made any use of, and he made up his mind to speak to the Troll about it. So he waited till St. John’s eve came round and the hill was open, and then hewent, and sure enough he found the Bjergman. He seemed a good-humoured fellow enough, but he was not so rich as most of them; he had only a very few copper vessels in his hill and hardly any silver.

“‘Herr Bjergman,’ said the Huusbonde, ‘you do not seem to be in a very good case, neither am I, but I think we may make something of this hill of yours between us—I say between us, for, you know, the top of the soil belongs to me, just as the under soil belongs to you.’

“‘Aye, aye!’ said the Bjergman, ‘I should like that very well. What do you propose?’

“‘Why, I propose to dig it up and sow it, and as we have both of us a right to the ground, I think in common fairness we ought both of us to labour at it, and then we will take the produce year and year about. The first year I will have all that is above ground and you shall have all below; and the next year we will change over, and then you shall have all that is above and I will have all that is below.”

“‘Well,’ said the Troll, greatly pleased, ‘that is fair; I like dealing with an honest man. When shall we begin?’

“‘Why, next spring, I think; suppose we say after Walpurgis night,[20]we cannot get at the ground much before.’

“‘With all my heart,’ said the Bjergman—and so they did. They worked very well together, but the Bjergman did twice as much work as his friend; they always do when they are pleased; and they sowed oats and rye and bear; and when harvest came the Huusbonde took that which was above the ground, the grain and the straw which came to his share, while the Bjergman was very well contented with his share of roots.

“‘When next Walpurgis night came round they dug up the ground again; and this time the Bjergman was to have all that was above ground, so they manured it well, and sowed turnips and carrots; and by and by, when the harvest came, the Huusbonde had a fine heap of roots, and the Bjergman was delighted with his share of greens. Therenever came any harm of this that I know, each was pleased with his bargain, and the Huusbonde came to be the richest man in the Tellemark. You know the family, Torkel, old Nils of Bygland, it was his grandfather Lars, to whom it happened.”

“Well,” said Torkel, “it is quite true, then, I can testify, I only wish I had a tenth part so many specie-dalers in the Trondhjem Bank as old Nils has.”

“And our Norfolk squires,” said the Captain, “fancy it was their sagacity that discovered the four-course system of agriculture! The Trolls were before them, it seems.”

“The system seems to answer quite as well in Norway as ever it did in England,” said the Parson, “If all that Tom tells us about Nils of Bygland be true.”

“There is not a doubt of that,” said Torkel, “all Tellemarken knows Nils of Bygland, and it is a great pity, when we were crossing the lake the other day, that we did not stop at his house; he was never known to let a stranger go to bed sober yet.”

“I should think he was seldom without company, then,” said Birger.

“It seems to have answered very well in this particular case,” said Jacob, “but I do not think you can trust beings without souls, after all. It is best just to make your offering to Nyssen, and to the Lady of the Lake, and two or three others, and then to have nothing more to do with them.”

“You certainly had better keep a sharp look-out,” said Torkel, “But I think we Norwegians know how to handle them, and so do our gallant friends the Danes. Did you ever hear how Kallendborg Church was built?”

The Englishmen, at all events, had not, and Torkel went on.

“Esberne Snorre was building that church, and his means began to run short, when a Troll came up to him and offered to finish it off himself, upon one condition, and that was, that if Snorre could not find out his name he should forfeit his heart and his eyes.

“Snorre was very anxious to finish his church, and he consented, though he was not without misgivings either; and theTroll set about his work in earnest. Kallendborg Church is the finest church in the whole country, and the roof of its nave was to stand on four pillars, for the Troll drew out the plan himself. It was all finished except half a pillar, and poor Snorre was in a great fright about his heart and his eyes, when one evening as he came home late from the market at Roeskilde he heard a Troll woman singing under a hill—

“Tie stille, barn min,Imorgen kommer FinFa’er din,Og gi’er dig Esberne Snorre’s öine og hjerte at lege mid.”[21]

“Tie stille, barn min,

Imorgen kommer Fin

Fa’er din,

Og gi’er dig Esberne Snorre’s öine og hjerte at lege mid.”[21]

“Snorre said nothing; but the next morning out he goes to his church, and there he meets the Troll bringing in the last half pillar.

“‘Good morning, my friendFin,’ said he, ‘you have got a heavy weight to carry.’

“The Troll stopped, looking at him fiercely, gnashed his teeth, stamped on the ground for rage, flew off with the half pillar he was carrying; and so Snorre built his church and kept his heart and eyes.”

“Do not believe a word of that,” said Jacob, “there is not a word of truth in the story; and as for Esberne Snorre building a church, everybody knows he was no better than he should be at any time of his life.[22]He was not the man to build a church, much less to give his eyes for it.”

“It is true,” said Torkel, “I have been at Kallendborg Church myself; and have seen the half pillar with my own eyes. The roof of the nave stands on three pillars and a half to this day.”

“More shame to the Kallendborgers, who never had religion enough to finish it,” said Jacob, “nor ever will. Do you mean to deny that the Devil carried off Esberne Snorre bodily? I think all the world knows that pretty well.”

“That shows that he thought him worth the trouble of carrying,” said Torkel, “he would never put himself out about carrying off you, because he knows you will go to him of your own accord.”

“Come, come, Torkel,” said the Parson, “do not be personal, and take your fingers off your knife handle; we cannot spare our cook yet, and you seem to like Jacob’s gröd yourself, too, judging by the quantity you eat of it; and now, Jacob, do not grind your teeth, but let us hear why you do not believe Torkel’s story, which certainly is very circumstantial, not to say probable.”

“Because every one knows that it was Lund Cathedral that was built by the Trolls, at the desire of the blessed Saint Laurentius,” said Jacob; “it was he who promised his eyes for it, and had them preserved by a miracle, not by a trumpery trick. Esberne Snorre, indeed; or any Dane, for matter of that! A set of infidels! It is only a Swede who would give his eyes for the church.”

“I should like to know who Scånia belonged to at the time when Lund Cathedral was built,” said Tom, “I do not think it was to the Swedes; and I should like to know who took away its archbishopric when they did get it, and made the great metropolis of all Scandinavia a trumpery little bishopric under the see of Upsala?”

“And I should like to know,” said Torkel, “who made bishops ride upon asses, and drink ‘du’ with the hangman. The Swedes give their eyes for the church, indeed! That for the Swedes!” snapping his fingers, and spitting on the ground.

This was a poser. Jacob was not only in the minority, but clearly wrong in matter of fact. At the dissolution ofthe union of Kalmar, Scånia, though situated in Sweden, was a Danish province, and its archbishop was, as he always had been, the metropolitan.

At the present time it is quite true that Scånia is a Swedish province; but this is a comparatively modern arrangement. In the days when the cathedral was built, though geographically a portion of Sweden, it was politically a province of Denmark; nor was it till its union with the former state that its capital, Lund, was deprived of its ecclesiastical primacy. And the treacherous conduct of Gustavus Vasa towards Canute, Archbishop of Upsala, and Peter, Bishop of Westeras, and the contumelies to which they were exposed, previous to their most unjust execution, are a blot even in that blood-stained reign, which Geijer himself, with all his ingenuity, cannot vindicate, and which the Norwegians, from whose protection the bishops were lured, are continually throwing in the teeth of their more powerful neighbours.

Birger himself was a little taken aback, not exactly liking that the weak points in his country’s history should be thus exposed to strangers.

“Never mind them, Jacob,” said he, forcing a laugh, “they are only Tellemarkers, and know no better. You and I shall see them, some of these days, climbing the trees of Goth’s garden themselves.”[23]

This bit of national slang, which fortunately was lost on the Norwegians, had the effect of soothing the ire of the sulky Jacob, who drew near to his countryman with a happy feeling of partisanship.

“The sooner the better,” said he, bitterly.

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