Musical cries came echoing as the
saeter-girls chid on the cattle, that moved slowly up to the northern
heights, with lowings and tinkling of bells. But Peer lay still where
he was--and presently the dairy-maid at the saeter caught sight of what
seemed an empty boat drifting on the lake, and was afraid some accident
had happened.
"Merle," thought Peer, still lying motionless. "Is your name Merle?"
The dairy-maid was down by the waterside now, calling across toward the
boat. And at last she saw a man sit up, rubbing his eyes.
"Mercy on us!" she cried. "Lord be thanked that you're there. And you
haven't been in the whole blessed night!"
A goat with a broken leg, set in splints, had been left to stray at will
about the cattle-pens and in and out of the house, while its leg-bones
were setting. Peer must needs pick up the creature and carry it round
for a while in his arms, though it at once began chewing at his beard.
When he sat down to the breakfast-table, he found something so touching
in the look of the cream and butter, the bread and the coffee, that
it seemed a man would need a heart of stone to be willing to eat such
things. And when the old woman said he really ought to get some food
into him, he sprang up and embraced her, as far as his arms would go
round. "Nice carryings on!" she cried, struggling to free herself. But
when he went so far as to imprint a sounding kiss on her forehead, she
fetched him a mighty push. "Lord!" she said, "if the gomeril hasn't gone
clean out of his wits this last night!"
Chapter IV
Ringeby lay on the shore of a great lake; and was one of those busy
commercial towns which have sprung up in the last fifty years from
a nucleus consisting of a saw-mill and a flour-mill by the side of a
waterfall.
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