Albert, too, had scrambled to his feet and had joined his comrade.
"Will you permit me, Mr. Sheriff," said Ralph, making the officer his politest bow, "to send a message to my father, who is probably anxious about us?"
"And who is your father, young man?" asked the sheriff, not unkindly; "I should think you were doing him an ill-turn in taking to poaching at your early age."
"My father is Mr. Hoyer, of Solheim," said the boy, not without some pride in the announcement.
"What--you rascal, you! Are you trying to, play pranks on an old man?"
cried the officer of the law, grasping Ralph cordially by the hand.
"You"ve grown to be quite a man, since I saw you last. Pardon me for not recognizing the son of an old neighbor."
"Allow me to introduce to you my friend, Mr. Biceps--I mean, Mr. Albert Grimlund."
"Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Biceps Albert; and now you must both come and eat the Christmas porridge with us. I"ll send a messenger to Mr. Hoyer without delay."
The sheriff, in a jolly mood, and happy to have added to the number of his Christmas guests, took each of the two young men by the arm, as if he were going to arrest them, and conducted them through the s.p.a.cious front hall into a large cosey room, where, having divested themselves of their wraps, they told the story of their adventure.
"But, my dear sir," Mr. Bjornerud exclaimed, "I don"t see how you managed to go beyond your father"s preserves. You know he bought of me the whole forest tract, adjoining his own on the south, about three months ago. So you were perfectly within your rights; for your father hasn"t killed an elk on his land for three years."
"If that is the case, Mr. Sheriff," said Ralph, "I must beg of you to release the poor fellow who chased us. I don"t wish any informer"s fee, nor have I any desire to get him into trouble."
"I am sorry to say I can"t accommodate you," Bjornerud replied. "This man is a notorious poacher and trespa.s.ser, whom my deputies have long been tracking in vain. Now that I have him I shall keep him. There"s no elk safe in Odalen so long as that rascal is at large."
"That may be; but I shall then turn my informer"s fee over to him, which will reduce his fine from fifty dollars to twenty-five dollars."
"To encourage him to continue poaching?"
"Well, I confess I have a little more sympathy with poachers, since we came so near being poachers ourselves. It was only an accident that saved us!"
THE NIXY"S STRAIN
Little Nils had an idea that he wanted to be something great in the world, but he did not quite know how to set about it. He had always been told that, having been born on a Sunday, he was a luck-child, and that good fortune would attend him on that account in whatever he undertook.
He had never, so far, noticed anything peculiar about himself, though, to be sure, his small enterprises did not usually come to grief, his snares were seldom empty, and his tiny stamping-mill, which he and his friend Thorstein had worked at so faithfully, was now making a merry noise over in the brook in the Westmo Glen, so that you could hear it a hundred yards away.
The reason of this, his mother told him, according to the superst.i.tion of her people, was that the Nixy and the Hulder [3] and the gnomes favored him because he was a Sunday child. What was more, she a.s.sured him, that he would see them some day, and then, if he conducted himself cleverly, so as to win their favor, he would, by their aid, rise high in the world, and make his fortune.
Now this was exactly what Nils wanted, and therefore he was not a little anxious to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creatures who had so whimsical a reason for taking an interest in him. Many and many a time he sat at the waterfall where the Nixy was said to play the harp every midsummer night, but although he sometimes imagined that he heard a vague melody trembling through the rush and roar of the water, and saw glimpses of white limbs flashing through the current, yet never did he get a good look at the Nixy.
Though he roamed through the woods early and late, setting snares for birds and rabbits, and was ever on the alert for a sight of the Hulder"s golden hair and scarlet bodice, the tricksy sprite persisted in eluding him.
He thought sometimes that he heard a faint, girlish giggle, full of teasing provocation and suppressed glee, among the underbrush, and once he imagined that he saw a gleam of scarlet and gold vanish in a dense alder copse.
But very little good did that do him, when he could not fix the vision, talk with it face to face, and extort the fulfilment of the three regulation wishes.
"I am probably not good enough," thought Nils. "I know I am a selfish fellow, and cruel, too, some-times, to birds and beasts. I suppose she won"t have anything to do with me, as long as she isn"t satisfied with my behavior."
Then he tried hard to be kind and considerate; smiled at his little sister when she pulled his hair, patted Sultan, the dog, instead of kicking him, when he was in his way, and never complained or sulked when he was sent on errands late at night or in bad weather.
But, strange to say, though the Nixy"s mysterious melody still sounded vaguely through the water"s roar, and the Hulder seemed to t.i.tter behind the tree-trunks and vanish in the underbrush, a real, unmistakable view was never vouchsafed to Nils, and the three wishes which were to make his fortune he had no chance of propounding.
He had fully made up his mind what his wishes were to be, for he was determined not to be taken by surprise. He knew well the fate of those foolish persons in the fairy tales who offend their benevolent protectors by bouncing against them head foremost, as it were, with a greedy cry for wealth.
Nils was not going to be caught that way. He would ask first for wisdom--that was what all right-minded heroes did--then for good repute among men, and lastly--and here was the rub--lastly he was inclined to ask for a five-bladed knife, like the one the parson"s Thorwald had got for a Christmas present.
But he had considerable misgiving about the expediency of this last wish. If he had a fair renown and wisdom, might he not be able to get along without a five-bladed pocket-knife? But no; there was no help for it. Without that five-bladed pocket-knife neither wisdom nor fame would satisfy him. It would be the drop of gall in his cup of joy.
After many days" pondering, it occurred to him, as a way out of the difficulty, that it would, perhaps, not offend the Hulder if he asked, not for wealth, but for a moderate prosperity. If he were blessed with a moderate prosperity, he could, of course, buy a five-bladed pocket-knife with corkscrew and all other appurtenances, and still have something left over.
He had a dreadful struggle with this question, for he was well aware that the proper things to wish were long life and happiness for his father and mother, or something in that line. But, though he wished his father and mother well, he could not make up his mind to forego his own precious chances on their account. Moreover, he consoled himself with the reflection that if he attained the goal of his own desires he could easily bestow upon them, of his bounty, a reasonable prospect of long life and happiness.
You see Nils was by no means so good yet as he ought to be. He was clever enough to perceive that he had small chance of seeing the Hulder, as long as his heart was full of selfishness and envy and greed.
For, strive as he might, he could not help feeling envious of the parson"s Thorwald, with his elaborate combination pocket-knife and his silver watch-chain, which he unfeelingly flaunted in the face of an admiring community. It was small consolation for Nils to know that there was no watch but only a key attached to it; for a silver watch-chain, even without a watch, was a sufficiently splendid possession to justify a boy in fording it over his less fortunate comrades.
Nils"s father, who was a poor charcoal-burner, could never afford to make his son such a present, even if he worked until he was as black as a chimney-sweep. For what little money he earned was needed at once for food and clothes for the family; and there were times when they were obliged to mix ground birch-bark with their flour in order to make it last longer.
It was easy enough for a rich man"s son to be good, Nils thought.
It was small credit to him if he was not envious, having never known want and never gone to bed on birch-bark porridge. But for a poor boy not to covet all the nice things which would make life so pleasant, if he had them, seemed next to impossible.
Still Nils kept on making good resolutions and breaking them, and then piecing them together again and breaking them anew.
If it had not been for his desire to see the Hulder and the Nixy, and making them promise the fulfilment of the three wishes, he would have given up the struggle, and resigned himself to being a bad boy because he was born so. But those teasing glimpses of the Hulder"s scarlet bodice and golden hair, and the vague s.n.a.t.c.hes of wondrous melody that rose from the cataract in the silent summer nights, filled his soul with an intense desire to see the whole Hulder, with her radiant smile and melancholy eyes, and to hear the whole melody plainly enough to be written down on paper and learned by heart.
It was with this longing to repeat the few haunting notes that hummed in his brain that Nils went to the schoolmaster one day and asked him for the loan of his fiddle. But the schoolmaster, hearing that Nils could not play, thought his request a foolish one and refused.
Nevertheless, that visit became an important event, and a turning-point in the boy"s life. For he was moved to confide in the schoolmaster, who was a kindly old man, and fond of clever boys; and he became interested in Nils. Though he regarded Nils"s desire to record the Nixy"s strains as absurd, he offered to teach him to play. There was good stuff in the lad, he thought, and when he had out-grown his fantastic nonsense, he might, very likely, make a good fiddler.
Thus it came to pa.s.s that the charcoal-burner"s son learned to play the violin. He had not had half a dozen lessons before he set about imitating the Nixy"s notes which he had heard in the waterfall.
"It was this way," he said to the schoolmaster, pressing his ear against the violin, while he ran the bow lightly over the strings; "or rather it was this way," making another ineffectual effort. "No, no, that wasn"t it, either. It"s no use, schoolmaster: I shall never be able to do it!"
he cried, flinging the violin on the table and rushing out of the door.
When he returned the next day he was heartily ashamed of his impatience.
To try to catch the Nixy"s notes after half a dozen lessons was, of course, an absurdity.
The master told him simply to banish such folly from his brain, to apply himself diligently to his scales, and not to bother himself about the Nixy.
That seemed to be sound advice and Nils accepted it with contrition.
He determined never to repeat his silly experiment. But when the next midsummer night came, a wild yearning possessed him, and he stole out noiselessly into the forest, and sat down on a stone by the river, listening intently.
For a long while he heard nothing but the monotonous boom of the water plunging into the deep. But, strangely enough, there was a vague, hushed rhythm in this thundering roar; and after a while he seemed to hear a faint strain, ravishingly sweet, which vibrated on the air for an instant and vanished.
It seemed to steal upon his ear unawares, and the moment he listened, with a determination to catch it, it was gone. But sweet it was--inexpressibly sweet.