There is no
one left to do it but me."
"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will be glad of that."
"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"
"The Wind-wife[2]--Mother Elle, who used to sell wind to the
sailors--the Finnish woman from Stavanger. She has gathered up a lot of
children who have no one to look after them and is leading them into the
mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson, and Olof and Anders
Amundson, and half a score of younger ones from different villages. She
says that if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter it
will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the valleys and the
towns. She has gone on with the small ones who cannot walk fast, and
left Olof and Anders and me to bring along the ponies with the loads.
I'll help you drive your beasts."
Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the byres and headed
them up the road. Norway is so sharply divided by precipitous mountain
ranges and deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles
from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures three or four
thousand feet above it where the cattle are pastured in summer. The
saeter maidens live there in their cottages from June to September,
making butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such other work as
they can.
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