LITMIR.BIZ

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Mountains is mine. And answer the old man that it was me, Brandi, that thou didst run after all the time. Hist! hist! here comes the old man,” she whispered, and whisked away.

      But a shadow again fell across the little hole in the moonlight, and the duck-necked one stuck her head in and peeped at him.

      “Swain, swain, art thou awake?”

      “That serpent-eye will make thee the laughingstock of the neighbourhood. She’s spiteful, and she stings. But the homestead westward in the Blue Mountains is mine, and when I play there the gates beneath the high mountains fly open, and through them lies the road to the nameless powers of nature. Do but say that ’twas me, Randi, thou wert running after, because she plays so prettily on the Langelijk.—“Hist, hist! the old man is stirring about by the wall!”—she beckoned to him and was gone.

      A little afterwards nearly every bit of the hole was darkened, and he recognised the Black one by her voice.

      “Swain, swain!” she hissed.

“I had to bind up my kirtle today behind,” said she, “so we couldn’t go dancing the Halling-fling40 together on the green sward. But the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after today, because thou art so madly fond of dancing jigs and hallings.”

      Then she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest she should have awakened the old man.

      And she was gone.

      But the lad sat inside there, and thought it all over, and looked up at the thin pale summer moon, and he thought that never in his whole life had he been in such evil case.

      From time to time he heard something moving, scraping, and snorting against the wall outside. It was the old fellow who lay there and kept watch over him.

      “Thou, swain, thou,” said another voice at the peep-hole.

      It was she who had planted herself so firmly on the rock with such sturdy hips and such a masterful voice.

“For these three hundred years have I been blowing the langelur41 here in the summer evenings far and wide, but never has it drawn any one westward hither into the Blue Mountains. And let me tell thee that we are all homeless and houseless, and all thou seest here is but glitter and glamour. Many a man has been befooled hither time out of mind. But I won’t have the other lasses married before me. And rather than that any one of them should get thee, I’ll free thee from the mountains. Mark me, now! When the sun is hot and high the old man will get frightened and crawl into his corner. Then look to thyself. Shove hard against the door of the hayloft, and hasten to get thee over the fence, and thou wilt be rid of us.”

      The drummer was not slow to follow this counsel. He crept out the moment the sun began to burn, and cleared the fence with one good bound.

      In less than no time he was down in the valley again.

      And far, far away towards sunrise in the mountains, he heard the sound of her langelur.

      He threw his drum across his shoulder, and hied him off to the manoeuvres at Moen.

      But never would he play rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the lasses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue Mountains before he was well aware of it.

38 A long slow dance, and the music to it.

39 A Sæter (Swed. säter) is a remote pasturage with huts upon it, where the cows are tended and dairy produce prepared for market and home use during the summer.

40 A country dance of a boisterous jig-like sort.

41 A long wooden trumpet.

      “IT’S ME”

They had chatted so long about the lasses down in the valley; and what a fine time they had of it there, that Gygra’s42 daughter grew sick and tired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side. She was bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.

      “Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and tidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron rake,” said the dwellers in the mountains.

      So Gygra’s daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the foss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to the ground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.

      One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the general-dealer’s kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.

“You must be cook, then,” said Madame.43 It seemed to her that the wench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no bones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they took her on.

      She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first time she carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the kitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times the carpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she burst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.

      When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up higgledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and tables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never seemed to grow less.

      Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.

      When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and scrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would no doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn’t broken to bits beneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought to be done, she only gasped and gaped.

      Such sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugs and dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.

      And then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.

      So her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner they were well quit of her the better.

      Out into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quite red in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again. He would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only stand with her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.

      Now when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen bench and doing nothing but gape through the window-panes at his boats, which lay down by the bridge laden with train-oil, he was downright furious. “Pack yourself off this instant!” said he.

      But Toad showed her teeth, and grinned and blinked up at him, and said that as master himself had come into the kitchen, he should see that she did not eat his bread for nothing.

      Then she slouched down to the boats, and snorted back at him with her arm before her face. Before any one could guess what she was after, she had one of the heavy hogsheads of train-oil on her back.

      And back she came through the kitchen door, all smirking and smiling, and begged father to be so good as to tell her where she was to put it.

      He simply stood and gaped at her. Such a thing he had never seen before.

      And hogshead after hogshead she carried from the boat right up into the shop.

      The general dealer laughed till he quite gasped for breath, and slapped his thighs

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