Only a few months
ago he had come down this very road with his father, driving the cattle
and goats home from the summer pasture. All the other farmers were doing
the same, and the clear notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used
for calling the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from slope
to slope. There was laughter and shouting and joking all the way down.
Now the only persons abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed
for plunder was more than their fear of the plague.
A thought came to the boy. How could he leave his father's cattle unfed
and uncared for? What if he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter
and tend them through the summer? He faced about, resolutely, and began
to descend the hill.
Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the
village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of
Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of
saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no
taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his
head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from
baby-hood, and for the last three years had lived in the priest's house
learning to be a clerk.
"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"
"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to the saeter.
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