Aye, he WOULD be a priest.
He might be a sinner now, and a wild young scamp; he certainly did curse
and swear like a trooper at times, if only to show the other boys that
it was all nonsense about the earth opening and swallowing you up. But
a priest he would be, all the same. None of your parsons with spectacles
and a pot belly: no, but a sort of heavenly messenger with snowy white
robes and a face of glory. Perhaps some day he might even come so far
that he could go down into that place of torment where his mother lay,
and bring her up again, up to salvation. And when, in autumn evenings,
he stood outside his palace, a white-haired bishop, he would lift up his
finger, and all the stars should break into song.
Clang, clang, sang the anvil under the hammer's beat.
In the still summer evenings a troop of boys go climbing up the naked
slopes towards the high wooded ranges to fetch home the cows for the
milking. The higher they climb, the farther and farther their sight can
travel out over the sea. And an hour or two later, as the sun goes down,
here comes a long string of red-flanked cattle trailing down, with a
faint jangle of bells, over the far-off ridges. The boys halloo them
on--"Ohoo-oo-oo!"--and swing their ringed rowan staves, and spit red
juice of the alder bark that they are chewing as men chew tobacco. Far
below them they see the farm lands, grey in shadow, and, beyond, the
waters of the fjord, yellow in the evening light, a mirror where red
clouds and white sails and hills of liquid blue are shining.
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