“That is a very curious long sort of ribbon,” thought the drummer to himself in his amazement. They were in a great hurry, too, to get him under the yoke, he thought; but they should find that a soldier on his way to the manoeuvres is not to be betrothed and married offhand.
So he told them bluntly that he had come hither for his drumsticks, and not to woo maidens, and he would thank them to let him have his property.
“But have a look about you a bit first, young man,” said the old fellow, and he pointed with his stick.
And all at once the drummer saw large dun cows grazing all along the mountain pastures, and the cowbells rang out their merry peals. Buckets and vats of the brightest copper shone all about, and never had he seen such shapely and nicely dressed milkmaids. There must needs be great wealth here.
“Perchance thou dost think ’tis but a beggarly inheritance I have here in the Blue Mountains,” said she, and sitting down on a haycock, she began chatting with him. “But we’ve four such sætar40 as this, and what I inherit from my mother is twelve times as large.”
But the drummer had seen what he had seen. They were rather too anxious to settle the property upon him, thought he. So he declared that in so serious a matter he must crave a little time for consideration.
Then the lass began to cry and take on, and asked him if he meant to befool a poor innocent, ignorant, young thing, and pursue her and drive her out of her very wits. She had put all her hope and trust in him, she said, and with that she fell a-howling.
She sat there quite inconsolable, and rocked herself to and fro with all her hair over her eyes, till at last the drummer began to feel quite sorry for her and almost angry with himself. She was certainly most simple-minded and confiding.
All at once she twisted round and threw herself petulantly down from the haycock. Her eyes spied all about, and seemed quite tiny and piercing as she looked up at him, and laughed and jested.
He started back. It was exactly as if he again saw the snake beneath the birch tree down there when it trundled away.
And now he wanted to be off as quickly as possible; he cared no longer about being civil.
Then she reared up with a hissing sound. She quite forgot herself, and a long tail hung down and whisked about from behind her kirtle.
He shouldn’t escape her in that way, she shrieked. He should first of all have a taste of public penance and public opinion from parish to parish. And then she called her father.
Then the drummer felt a grip on his jacket, and he was lifted right off his legs.
He was chucked into an empty cow-house, and the door was shut behind him.
There he stood and had nothing to look at but an old billy-goat through a crack in the door, who had odd, yellow eyes, and was very much like the old fellow, and a sunbeam through a little hole, which sunbeam crept higher and higher up the blank stable wall till late in the evening, when it went out altogether.
But towards night a voice outside said softly, “Swain! swain!” and in the moonlight he saw a shadow cross the little hole.
“Hist! hist! the old man is sleeping at the other side of the wall,” it sounded.
He knew by the voice that it was she, the golden-red one, who had behaved so prettily and been so bashful the moment he had come upon the scene.
“Thou need’st but say that thou dost know that serpent-eye has had a lover before, or they wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get her off their hands with a dowry. Thou must know that the homestead westwards in the Blue Mountains is mine. And answer the old man that it was me, Brandi, that thou didst run after all the time. Hist! hist! here comes the old man,” she whispered, and whisked away.
But a shadow again fell across the little hole in the moonlight, and the duck-necked one stuck her head in and peeped at him.
“Swain, swain, art thou awake?”
“That serpent-eye will make thee the laughingstock of the neighbourhood. She’s spiteful, and she stings. But the homestead westward in the Blue Mountains is mine, and when I play there the gates beneath the high mountains fly open, and through them lies the road to the nameless powers of nature. Do but say that ’twas me, Randi, thou wert running after, because she plays so prettily on the Langelijk.—Hist, hist! the old man is stirring about by the wall!”—she beckoned to him and was gone.
A little afterwards nearly every bit of the hole was darkened, and he recognised the Black one by her voice.
“Swain, swain!” she hissed.
“I had to bind up my kirtle today behind,” said she, “so we couldn’t go dancing the Halling-fling41 together on the green sward. But the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after today, because thou art so madly fond of dancing jigs and hallings.”
Then she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest she should have awakened the old man.
And she was gone.
But the lad sat inside there, and thought it all over, and looked up at the thin pale summer moon, and he thought that never in his whole life had he been in such evil case.
From time to time he heard something moving, scraping, and snorting against the wall outside. It
