CHAPTER VII

SEPARATED

The little group of children passing through the mountain village attracted little attention. It was altogether too common a sight in those hard times to see whole starving households set out to beg for food.

The Barren Moor children followed Ladd-Pelle’s advice and took their way along the river. At first they were both frightened and disheartened, and talked longingly about the Spectacle Man.

But it was so beautiful with so much snow; it was so free and jolly to be out. Before long they were quite content and happy once more. It had cleared, and the drifts stood in high banks along the roadsides. They were so funny, too, the heavy snowdrifts. They lay like thick white blankets on the roofs, blankets which hung away down against the windows. Juniper bushes and low fir trees had comical high pointed caps, and over the old fences the snowdrifts lay in folds like thick woolly white garments.

What a lot there was to see this day! Red two-story houses and small gray cottages they paid little attention to. All this was just as it was at home in their own parish. But women, who climbed through snow over their knees to come to the barns which lay sunken in the white drifts, children who swept and shoveled steps and walks, and men who were busy harnessing and getting ready to drive timber in the woods.

Toward noon the children went into a large red farmhouse near the edge of the settlement. Here they were given food, bread, and boiled herring. Even a bowl of buttermilk was set out for them on the hearth. But they left, quiet and disheartened. The mistress, who had given them of God’s loan, had looked so bitter, had thrown the food at them, and muttered, so that they all heard it, that one was absolutely eaten out of house and home by beggars from the mountains.

The master, who had come in and seen them eating, standing in a row at the hearth, had said that such a crowd would be best off in the poor-house, and that, if all his horses weren’t in the woods, he’d be wise to take them back.

The children there looked as sullen and sour as though they had lived in the poor-house instead of on a big farm where they were so rich that they had six copper kettles on the shelf above the door and splendid cupboards, and silver spoons in a whole row highest up on the cupboard shelf.

‘Even if it was nice there, I think it was finer at Per’s,’ said Magnus. ‘Now he was a nice man.’

‘It wasn’t finer,’ put in Anna-Lisa. ‘Think how awful it looked when we came! The floor was dirty and the fireplace black; it hadn’t been whitewashed in years; and the window so dirty that you couldn’t see through it, and the sheets and pillow-case awful, before we washed them. No, it wasn’t finer. It isn’t finer now when the floor is white and is covered with carpets, and the fireplace is clean, and the window clear--I don’t know----’ Anna-Lisa stared puzzled and perplexed before her.

‘No, I don’t know either,’ mused Andy. ‘The bread we got here was of better flour and light and fine too. We got food here, and still I’m kind of mad at them.’

‘And mother, who said we mustn’t be mad, Andy. No, I’m not mad,’ said Maglena. ‘But when I think of them, then I get scared of the people we’ll meet in the settlements. I’m afraid of people that have big farms. They have so much, anyway, that a hard year doesn’t hurt them----’

‘But, anyway, it was better at Per’s.’

The brothers and sisters walked in a group around Andy. They had so much to talk and think about.

‘And there was no mother at Per’s,’ remarked Magnus.

‘No; for then he could have had it comfortable, anyway, and neat in the corners,’ concluded Anna-Lisa.

‘If the mother had been like our mother, before she died----’ added Maglena with a dreamy upward glance.

‘We’ll have to hurry up if we want to get over the river before it gets dark,’ said Andy, and cast a glance around him.

‘It is beginning to blow from the northeast and that’s never a good wind.’

‘But how is it with the little ones now?’ Andy stopped the sled, bent down over the little girls, and tucked the robe about Martha-Greta, who sat rather uncomfortably in front of Brita-Carrie.

‘Martha-Greta says she wants wings so she can fly like the angels,’ said Brita-Carrie.

‘Ata-Eta ’ants two big wings--and fly up to hennenly Tana, ’way to hennenly Tana.’ Martha-Greta’s big deep blue eyes looked earnestly out through the shawl opening.

‘Hear what she says. She wants to fly to heavenly Canaan. Mother is in heavenly Canaan,’ confirmed Maglena, and pushed the shawl back to kiss the little sister who was so dear to the hearts of all of them.

‘Here is a bun for you. I saved it just for you.’

Maglena popped the bun, big as it was, into Martha-Greta’s mouth.

‘Maglena! Do you want to choke our baby?’ said Andy, and jumped to the rescue of the half-choked little one. Then he fed the bun, bit by bit, into her eager mouth.

‘And here you have a little milk to warm yourselves with. She’s a good milker, Golden Horn is.’

Anna-Lisa came forward with quite a large wooden bowl full of foaming warm milk.

‘Go’n Ho’n. Brave Go’n Ho’n!’ came Martha-Greta’s caressing voice from the shawl.

Go’n Ho’n’ pushed her slender nose through the shawl opening.

And then they were away again with renewed strength. The big farm and the angry feelings it had awakened had vanished. The road was already comparatively open. A herd of reindeer had apparently gone by a little while before and tramped down the snow. The thousands of feet had opened the road a good distance. A ragged cheese vat of braided roots, such as the Lapps use when they make cheese of reindeer milk, lay in the middle of the road.

Maglena picked it up and hung it on the branch of one of the small firs that marked the road.

‘Come, and let it lie there,’ growled Anna-Lisa.

‘It wasn’t comfortable and the little tree begged me to make it nice,’ laughed Maglena. ‘But now I’m beginning to get tired.’

Her voice showed that she was not as gay as she pretended to be.

‘Stand behind on the runners awhile and rest,’ said Andy. ‘Anna-Lisa and I can manage with all three of you a good bit. I am afraid there is snow there in the northwest over the big mountain. But it can’t be long before we can leave the river and reach the village Pelle told us about.’

They went quickly forward over the level road which led over the frozen stream. The little girls were asleep, or at least they were absolutely quiet. And the others were also quiet. There was something threatening, something almost awesome in the air.

A blast of wind came with a long wailing cry.

‘Hu, you would think there were wolves after us, the way the wind howls,’ said Anna-Lisa, and drew the thin cloth closer about her head.

‘But isn’t it easier for you to walk now, anyway, when you have such good shoes?’ asked Andy with a glance at the shoes, which, though most certainly clumsy, were new and fine.

‘I should say so! I can jump in them, and they stay on, anyway.’ Anna-Lisa gave a few awkward jumps forward.

It was as if she thereby irritated a flock of snowflakes which lay in wait for the children, for all of a sudden driving sharp snow enveloped them. Angrily it forced its way through scarfs and shawls. It threw itself in masses across the road, which soon lay in uneven waves. If the little fir trees had not marked the way, the children would soon have gone astray on the wide river plain.

It became harder to pull the sled through the drifted snow. Andy called to Maglena that she would have to jump off the runners now.

Maglena obeyed, and soon afterwards came panting forward to the others, who, with the goat between them, made a close group.

The sled had suddenly become so light.

‘It’s awful how heavy you are. Now it’s as light as nothing,’ said Anna-Lisa, and jerked the rope toward her. She had an altogether different temper since she had new shoes and no longer suffered from blisters.

‘I don’t think it’s easy to get anywhere in this snow,’ muttered Magnus, who was just then in the middle of a drift.

‘But I go along between the drifts, I do,’ panted Per-Erik. ‘It’s a little back and forth, but I can’t climb straight through any more.’

‘Do you think it is far to the village?’ whispered Maglena, and slipped her hand closely into Andy’s.

‘I don’t think so,’ answered Andy, who with wide-open eyes tried to see through the wildly whirling, lashing snowflakes.

‘We must stop and tuck in the little ones first, so they’ll be warmer, and then we can go faster afterwards.’

Andy turned toward the sled. He thought it looked queerly empty through the snowy dusk. In a couple of steps he was beside it. He gave a shriek, a strange, hoarse cry, such a cry as they had never heard from Andy, who was always so quiet and self-contained.

‘What in all the world is the matter with you, boy?’ called Anna-Lisa.

‘Martha-Greta! Can’t you see--Brita-Carrie, listen!’ Andy shook Brita-Carrie, who slept steadily on.

‘Where is Martha-Greta?’

‘I don’t know--she was here all the time.’

‘If you can go on alone, I’ll go back after Martha-Greta,’ said Andy firmly. ‘Walk just fast enough to keep warm, and keep between the trees. Yes, you must do as I say,’ repeated Andy bravely, but thoroughly miserable. But now the group gave a howl of fright, sorrow, and terror at the thought of being left alone without Andy’s comfortable protection.

‘You, Anna-Lisa, ought to be able to be quiet, and you, too, who are men-folk. I must go back and look for Martha-Greta. She probably tumbled off the sled soon after Maglena had jumped off the runners. If you had stayed there, you would have seen it. But I had to get lazy, of course, and not pull so many.’

‘Oh, dear, don’t stand and fuss about it,’ sobbed Maglena. ‘Go and find our Martha-Greta. We’ll go on like big folks. We have the piece of pork to eat, and bread too.’

‘Take care of the children, Anna-Lisa.’

‘Look for the cheese-vat wreath on the tree. When I hung that there, we were all together, and then you needn’t go farther,’ called Maglena after Andy, who, half-running, with wind and driving snow now on his back, was away into the drifted snow-field.