CHAPTER XV

GHOSTS ON THE ICE

‘Ugh, it’s just exactly as if we were all alone in the whole world,’ said Maglena, and drew closer about her the little home-woven shawl she had been given by Mistress Brita Dea.

‘That’s true enough, but it won’t be so hard to go into a house now when we aren’t so many,’ comforted Andy.

‘When I stay out with Golden Horn, where there isn’t any place to tie her, you’ll be just two, and that can’t be anything to fuss over.’

‘Anything,’ repeated Maglena. ‘I always remember the little girls and Martha-Greta when she said “nennenin” for “anything.” She put her little head on the side and rolled up her eyes and pretended to be so miserable.’

‘And she was too, many times, when she was cold, poor thing, and was hungry and wanted mother,’ said Andy thoughtfully. ‘Mother must be satisfied now, the way the little ones are taken care of,’ he added.

‘And I’m sure she is. Maybe she came to earth and talked to the people so the forester and Karl Nilsson took the children.’

‘Yes, they’re well off all right. They wouldn’t think it was any fun to walk here on the ice with their feet slipping in all directions so that they nearly split in two,’ said Magnus grimly.

To tell the truth, he missed Per-Erik appallingly, even though he thought he could get along without Anna-Lisa. But his own feeling of loss was not unmixed with a feeling of a little sympathy also for the brother, who now, alone and defenseless, was the one on whom Anna-Lisa would descend with soap and water. Magnus had sympathetically pointed out this side of the matter to Per-Erik, who, however, with something of courage and hope in his voice, had been sure that it really wouldn’t be quite so bad. Little Karl was getting better, assured Per-Erik, ‘and you may be sure that, even if he is a rich farmer’s son, he must be both combed and washed. And especially now when there is some one like Anna-Lisa in the house.’

But although he thought about how helplessly exposed he, Per-Erik, was to such things, Magnus wished that evening that he were back with him in the light pleasant farmhouse.

That would be other than walking over ice that shone black, and glittered as if one were on open water, and have northern lights overhead besides, threatening and alarming with red and yellow and blue flames high up in the heavens. One could really believe that it was the Day of Judgment and that everything, both earth and moon and stars, was about to burn up. For just so sparkled and shone and flew the flames up there in the northern sky. And in spite of that the moon sat there in his place and laughed with his whole face, without knowing the danger that surrounded him.

Magnus could just as well have ridden on the sled, which glided lightly as a mere nothing over the ice, and then he wouldn’t have needed to suffer all this slipping and sliding in all directions. Both Andy and Maglena had advised him to. But Magnus said that he was man enough to walk.

The truth was that the owls had begun to hoot weirdly in the Black Mountain that formed a wall along the lake, and then those unpleasant northern lights were so frightening. Magnus thought that on the sled he was altogether too far away from people, that is to say, from the older brother and sister.

Andy and Maglena led Golden Horn between them. They supported her at the same time, for it was no doubt just as hard for her as for Magnus to stand on the slippery ice.

‘We must pull her,’ said Maglena. ‘Poor little girl, you slip in all directions and will soon be all worn out. Sit on the sled, Magnus, and hold on to her. She can stand there just as well as not.’

‘She’ll stand there, anyway. It’s kind of more comfortable for me to walk,’ assured Magnus, and at the same time he slipped with one foot and sat down hard on the ice.

He was angry, for it was at least the eleventh time he had sat down since he had come out on the ice, and he was frightened.

While he still sits there and whiningly rubs the part that gets the first bump when one sits down on ice, he sees something that makes the hair rise on his round head. He wasn’t very brave at heart before, of course. Yes, something comes running toward the children across the ice, something that flies as fast as the east wind which blows across the lake. It shrieks and snarls and spits. And it looks as if a little spiral of smoke stands right up from that thing that comes running.

Magnus was on his feet again, and that in a hurry.

‘Oh, good gracious! Boy! Girl! Do you see?--I think it is a ghost coming to take us.’

Andy and Maglena started back with fright. They as well as Magnus would have liked to take to their heels. But it was absolutely impossible to get away from the rapidly approaching monster over the slippery ice.

‘What in all the world is it?’ whispered Andy, staring with wide-open eyes at the dark animal which with two fiery eye-sockets, or whatever it was, seemed intending to fly at them.

Maglena had tight hold of Andy’s hand. Magnus, the little ‘man,’ forgot his manly dignity entirely. He shrieked and clung tightly to Andy with both arms and legs.

‘I’ve never in my life seen anything so awful!’ screamed Maglena. ‘Why, it’s a cat, and she can’t walk!’ Maglena took the monster, which really proved to be a cat, up into her arms without paying any attention to the way she snarled and spit; she herself trembled with fright and sympathy.

‘She has such queer feet,’ she added unhappily. ‘Andy, can you understand what is the matter with them?’

Andy looked closely at the cat’s feet. ‘It is--it--what in all the world! It’s pig’s feet that they’ve stuck the cat’s feet into! That’s why she couldn’t take care of herself, but had to go along with the east wind on the ice.’

Tears sprang to Maglena’s eyes. She pulled and jerked at the instruments of torture that squeezed the cat’s feet.

‘Kitty, poor, poor kitty! People have done this, ’cause see how hard they’re bound with sharp strings.’

It was as if Maglena saw proof in these strings that it was people who had committed the crime, and as if otherwise the cat herself would have put on the pig’s feet as rubbers.

‘Well, if people have done it, then they are not people, but something worse than everything mean,’ said Andy. His eyes flashed in the moonlight and his hands doubled up as if he wanted to beat the people who had done this.

‘It was the tail that stuck straight up that I thought was smoke,’ said Magnus, who, standing by himself at a safe distance from the cat’s claws, now looked her over carefully. ‘I was nearly scared that time, and then it was only a cat!’ He sniffed disdainfully.

‘Only a cat!’ said Maglena, full of resentment. ‘I wish that the one who did this sat with his feet tied, and frightened and hungry and cold.’

‘Yes, and had those bad northern lights over him, and the owls that hoot in the mountains, and a score of wolves that howl around him,’ interrupted Magnus in order to make the punishment really severe.

‘Yes, that too; and the one who did this should have to go on alone in the night in front of the east wind and not be able to stop,’ went on Maglena.

She still wept, rocked, and caressed the cat as she sat on the sled with her in her arms.

‘I didn’t think there were such cruel people in the world,’ said Andy gloomily.

‘They could never have done such a thing at home at Barren Moor.’

‘I should think not! Any one who did that would be disgraced forever,’ concluded Maglena sternly.

‘But now you must have food, poor kitty. You are as thin and dry as a knife-blade.’

If Maglena’s simile was not exactly sound, there was at least that much truth in it that the cat looked wretched and rough--for she hadn’t been able to lick and clean herself as cats like to do to keep themselves nice; wet--for she had been in the water; and with bleeding feet.

‘There, Andy, take her while I milk a drop for her.’

Andy took the cat and held her faithfully, if not also with the same overflowing tenderness that Maglena showed in her treatment of the unhappy tortured animal.

The cat had stopped spitting and snarling, and now lapped up the warm milk from a little wooden bowl. Then she began to clean and lick her bruised and sore paws, and wash her face with the inside of her front paws which she first wet with her tongue. Then she crept up into Maglena’s lap, mewing gently and gratefully. They were at once good friends, the sure friendship between rescued and rescuer.

The robe on the sled was arranged to best advantage. Magnus was ordered there again, and now he could sit there, of course, ‘so that the cat shouldn’t run away from them.’

With Maglena near by, who, with the same idea, walked close behind him and pushed the sled, all his manly dignity, which had so obviously disappeared for a while, came back.