Part 21

“I thought you were looking at the sun, Arnfinn,” answered she, smiling reluctantly.

“And so I am, cousin,” laughed he, with an other-emphatic slap of his boot.

“That compliment is rather stale.”

“But the opportunity was too tempting.”

“Never mind, I will excuse you from further efforts. Turn around and notice that wonderful purple halo which is hovering over the forests below. Isn’t it glorious?”

“No, don’t let us be solemn, pray. The sun I have seen a thousand times before, but you I have seen very seldom of late. Somehow, since I returned this time, you seem to keep me at a distance. You no longer confide to me your great plans for the abolishment of war, and the improvement of mankind generally. Why don’t you tell me whether you have as yet succeeded in convincing the peasants that cleanliness is a cardinal virtue, that hawthorn hedges are more picturesque than rail fences, and that salt meat is a very indigestible article?”

“You know the fate of my reforms, from long experience,” she answered, with the same sad, sweet smile. “I am afraid there must be some thing radically wrong about my methods; and, moreover, I know that your aspirations and mine are no longer the same, if they ever have been, and I am not ungenerous enough to force you to feign an interest which you do not feel.”

“Yes, I know you think me flippant and boyish,” retorted he, with sudden energy, and tossing a stone down into the gulf below. “But, by the way, my friend Strand, if he ever comes, would be just the man for you. He has quite as many hobbies as you have, and, what is more, he has a profound respect for hobbies in general, and is universally charitable toward those of others.”

“Your friend is a great man,” said the girl, earnestly. “I have read his book on `The Wading Birds of the Norwegian Highlands,’ and none but a great man could have written it.”

“He is an odd stick, but, for all that, a capital fellow; and I have no doubt you would get on admirably with him.”

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the pastor’s man, Hans, who came to tell the “young miss” that there was a big tramp hovering about the barns in the “out-fields,” where he had been sleeping during the last three nights. He was a dangerous character, Hans thought, at least judging from his looks, and it was hardly safe for the young miss to be roaming about the fields at night as long as he was in the neighborhood.

“Why don’t you speak to the pastor, and have him arrested?” said Arnfinn, impatient of Hans’s long-winded recital.

“No, no, say nothing to father,” demanded Augusta, eagerly. “Why should you arrest a poor man as long as he does nothing worse than sleep in the barns in the out-fields?”

“As you say, miss,” retorted Hans, and departed.

The moon came up pale and mist-like over the eastern mountain ridges, struggled for a few brief moments feebly with the sunlight, and then vanished.

“It is strange,” said Arnfinn, “how everything reminds me of Strand to-night. What gloriously absurd apostrophes to the moon he could make! I have not told you, cousin, of a very singular gift which he possesses. He can attract all kinds of birds and wild animals to himself; he can imitate their voices, and they flock around him, as if he were one of them, without fear of harm.”

“How delightful,” cried Augusta, with sudden animation. “What a glorious man your friend must be!”

“Because the snipes and the wild ducks like him? You seem to have greater confidence in their judgment than in mine.”

“Of course I have--at least as long as you persist in joking. But, jesting aside, what a wondrously beautiful life he must lead whom Nature takes thus into her confidence; who has, as it were, an inner and subtler sense, corresponding to each grosser and external one; who is keen-sighted enough to read the character of every individual beast, and has ears sensitive to the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of the birds that inhabit our woodlands.”

“Whether he has any such second set of senses as you speak of, I don’t know; but there can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to say intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a great advantage as a naturalist. I suppose you know that his little book has been translated into French, and rewarded with the gold medal of the Academy.”

“Hush! What is that?” Augusta sprang up, and held her hand to her ear.

“Some love-lorn mountain-cock playing yonder in the pine copse,” suggested Arnfinn, amused at his cousin’s eagerness.

“You silly boy! Don’t you know the mountain-cock never plays except at sunrise?”

“He would have a sorry time of it now, then, when there IS no sunrise.”

“And so he has; he does not play except in early spring.”

The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings and snaps, and at last, a sort of diminuendo movement of the same round, pearly clucks. There was a whizzing of wing-beats in the air; two large birds swept over their heads and struck down into the copse whence the sound had issued.

“This is indeed a most singular thing,” said Augusta, under her breath, and with wide-eyed wonder. “Let us go nearer, and see what it can be.”

“I am sure I can go if you can,” responded Arnfinn, not any too eagerly. “Give me your hand, and we can climb the better.”