Erling the Bold, Robert Michael Ballantyne [book club reads .txt] 📗

art looking at it upside down, my son," said the hermit, who had been observing them with an amused expression of countenance.

"Oh, so he is; I never thought of that," cried Hilda, laughing; "thou must sit beside me, Erling, so that we may see it in the same way."

"This one, now, with the curve _that_ way," she went on, "dost thou see it?"

"See it!" thought Erling, "of course I see it: the prettiest little hand in all the dale!" But he only said--

"How can I see it, Hilda, when the point of thy finger covers it?"

"Oh! well," drawing the finger down a little, "thou seest it now?"

"Yes."

"Well, that is--why! where is Christian?" she exclaimed, looking up suddenly in great surprise, and pointing to the stool on which the hermit certainly had been sitting a few minutes before, but which was now vacant.

"He must have gone out while we were busy with the--the parchment," said Erling, also much surprised.

"He went like a mouse, then," said Hilda, "for I heard him not."

"Nor I," added her companion.

"Very strange," said she.

Now there was nothing particularly strange in the matter. The fact was that the old man had just exercised a little of Erling's philosophy in the way of projecting a cause to its result. As we have elsewhere hinted, the hermit was not one of those ascetics who, in ignorance of the truth, banished themselves out of the world. His banishment had not been self-imposed. He had fled before the fierce persecutors. They managed to slay the old man's wife, however, before they made him take to flight and seek that refuge and freedom of conscience among the Pagan Northmen which were denied him in Christian Europe. In the first ten minutes after the A B C class began he perceived how things stood with the young people, and, wisely judging that the causes which were operating in their hearts would proceed to their issue more pleasantly in his absence, he quietly got up and went out to cut firewood.

After this the hermit invariably found it necessary to go out and cut firewood when Erling and Hilda arrived at the school, which they did regularly three times a week.

This, of course, was considered a very natural and proper state of things by the two young people, for they were both considerate by nature, and would have been sorry indeed to have interrupted the old man in his regular work.

But Erling soon began to feel that it was absolutely essential for one of them to be in advance of the other in regard to knowledge, if the work of teaching was to go on; for, while both remained equally ignorant, the fiction could not be kept up with even the semblance of propriety. To obviate this difficulty he paid solitary nocturnal visits to the hut, on which occasions he applied himself so zealously to the study of the strange characters that he not only became as expert as his teacher, but left her far behind, and triumphantly rebutted the charge of stupidity which she had made against him.

At the same time our hero entered a new and captivating region of mental and spiritual activity when the hermit laid before him the portions of Holy Scripture which he had copied out before leaving southern lands, and expounded to him the grand, the glorious truths that God had revealed to man through Jesus Christ our Lord. And profoundly deep, and startling even to himself, were the workings of the young Norseman's active mind while he sat there, night after night, in the lone hut on the cliff, poring over the sacred rolls, or holding earnest converse with the old man about things past, present, and future.


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.


IN WHICH GLUMM TAKES TO HUNTING ON THE MOUNTAINS FOR CONSOLATION, AND FINDS IT UNEXPECTEDLY, WHILE ALRIC PROVES HIMSELF A HERO.

"I go to the fells to-day," said Glumm to Alric one morning, as the latter opened the door of Glummstede and entered the hall.

"I go also," said Alric, leaning a stout spear which he carried against the wall, and sitting down on a stool beside the fire to watch Glumm as he equipped himself for the chase.

"Art ready, then? for the day is late," said Glumm.

"All busked," replied the boy.--"I say, Glumm, is that a new spear thou hast got?"

"Aye; I took it from a Swedish viking the last fight I had off the coast. We had a tough job of it, and left one or two stout men behind to glut the birds of Odin, but we brought away much booty. This was part of it," he added, buckling on a long hunting-knife, which was stuck in a richly ornamented sheath, "and that silver tankard too, besides the red mantle that my mother wears, and a few other things--but my comrades got the most of it."

"I wish I had been there, Glumm," said Alric.

"If Hilda were here, lad, she would say it is wrong to wish to fight."

"Hilda has strange thoughts," observed the boy.

"So has Erling," remarked his companion.

"And so has Ada," said Alric, with a sly glance.

Glumm looked up quickly. "What knowest _thou_ about Ada?" said he.

The sly look vanished before Glumm had time to observe it, and an expression of extreme innocence took its place as the lad replied--

"I know as much about her as is usual with one who has known a girl, and been often with her, since the day he was born."

"True," muttered Glumm, stooping to fasten the thongs that laced the untanned shoes on his feet. "Ada has strange thoughts also, as thou sayest. Come now, take thy spear, and let us be gone."

"Where shall we go to-day?" asked Alric.

"To the wolf's glen."

"To the wolf's glen? that is far."

"Is it too far for thee, lad?"

"Nay, twice the distance were not too far for me," returned the boy proudly; "but the day advances, and there is danger without honour in walking on the fells after dark."

"The more need for haste," said Glumm, opening the door and going out.

Alric followed, and for some time these two walked in silence, as the path was very steep, and so narrow for a considerable distance, that they could not walk abreast.

Snow lay pretty thickly on the mountains, particularly in sheltered places, but in exposed parts it had been blown off, and the hunters could advance easily. In about ten minutes after setting out they lost sight of Glummstede. As they advanced higher and deeper into the mountains, the fiord and the sea, with its innumerable skerries, was lost to view, but it was not until they had toiled upwards and onwards for nearly two hours that they reached those dark recesses of the fells to which the bears and wolves were wont to retreat after committing depredations on the farms in the valleys far below.

There was something in the rugged grandeur of the scenery here, in the whiteness of the snow, the blackness of the rocks which peeped out from its voluminous wreaths, the lightness of the atmosphere, and, above all, the impressive silence, which possessed an indescribable charm for the romantic mind of Alric, and which induced even the stern matter-of-fact Glumm to tread with slower steps, and to look around him with a feeling almost akin to awe. No living thing was to be seen, either among the stupendous crags which still towered above, or in the depths which they had left below; but there were several footprints of wolves, all of which Glumm declared, after careful examination, to be old.

"See here, lad," he said, turning up one of these footprints with the butt of his spear; "observe the hardish ball of snow just under the print; that shows that the track is somewhat old. If it had been quite fresh there would have been no such ball."

"Thou must think my memory of the shortest, Glumm, for I have been told that every time I have been out with thee."

"True, but thou art so stupid," said Glumm, laying his spear lightly across the boy's shoulders, "that I have thought fit to impress it on thee by repetition, having an interest in thine education, although thou dost not deserve it."

"I deserve it, mayhap, more than ye think."

"How so, boy?"

"_Why_, because I have for a long time past taken an uncommon interest in thy welfare."

Glumm laughed, and said he did not know that there was any occasion to concern himself about his welfare.

"Oh yes, there is!" cried Alric, "for, when a man goes moping about the country as if he were fey, or as if he had dreamed of seeing his own guardian spirit, his friends cannot help being concerned about him."

"Why, what is running in the lad's head?" said Glumm, looking with a perplexed expression at his young companion.

"Nothing runs in my head, save ordinary thoughts. If there be any unusual running at all, it must be in thine own."

"Speak, thou little fox," said Glumm, suddenly grasping Alric by the nape of the neck and giving him a shake.

"Nay then, if that is thy plan," said the boy, "give it a fair trial. Shake away, and see what comes of it. Thou mayest shake out blood, bones, flesh, and life too, and carry home my skin as a trophy, but be assured that thou shalt not shake a word off my tongue!"

"Boldly spoken," said Glumm, laughing, as he released the lad; "but I think thy tone would change if I were to take thee at thy word."

"That it would not. Thou art not the first man whom I have defied, aye, and drawn blood from, as that red-haired Dane--"

Alric stopped suddenly. He had reached that age when the tendency to boast begins, at least in manly boys, to be checked by increasing good sense and good taste. Yet it is no disparagement of Alric's character to say that he found it uncommonly difficult to refrain, when occasion served, from making reference to his first warlike exploit, even although frequent rebukes and increasing wisdom told him that boasting was only fit for the lips of cowards.

"Why do ye stop?" asked Glumm, who quite understood the boy's feelings, and admired his exercise of self-control.

"Be--because I have said enough."

"Good is it," observed the other, "when man or boy knows that he has said enough, and has the power to stop when he knows it. But come, Alric, thou hast not said enough to me yet on the matter that--that--"

"What matter?" asked Alric, with a sly look.

"Why, the matter of my welfare, to be sure."

"Ah, true. Well, methinks, Glumm, that I could give thee a little medicine for thy mind, but I won't, unless ye promise to keep thy spear off my back."

"I promise," said Glumm, whose curiosity was aroused.

"It is a sad thing when a man looks sweet and a maid looks sour, but there is a worse thing; that is when the maid _feels_ sour. Thou lovest Ada--"

"Hold!" cried Glumm, turning fiercely on his companion, "and let not thy pert tongue dare to speak of such things, else will I show