the Lapps
who pitch their tents on the mountain should like having a fine Gammel
cheese for the trouble of picking it up: and the company whose tents
Erica had passed on her way up to the seater, kept a good look-out upon
all the dairy people round, and carried off every cheese meant for the
demon. While Erica was gathering and strewing the blossoms, this girl
was hidden near: and, trusting to Erica's not looking behind her, the
rogue swept off the blossoms, and threw them at her, before she had gone
ten yards, trundled the cheese down the other side of the ridge, made a
circuit, and was at the tents with her prize before supper-time! What
would Erica have thought if she had beheld this fruit of so many
milkings and skimmings, so much boiling and pressing, devoured by greedy
Lapps in their dirty tent?

On her way homewards, Erica remembered that this was Midsummer Eve,--a
season when her mother was in her thoughts more than at any other time,
for Midsummer Eve is sacred in Norway to the Wood-Demon, whose victim
she believed her mother to have been. Every woodman sticks his axe into
a tree that night, that the demon may, if he pleases, begin the work of
the year by felling trees, or making a fagot. Erica hastened to the
seater, to discover whether Erlingsen had left his axe behind, and
whether Jan had one with him.

Jan had an axe, and remembering his duty, though tired and sleepy, was
just going to the nearest pine grove with it when Erica reached home;
she seized Erlingsen's axe and went also, and stuck it in a tree, just
within the verge of the grove, which was in that part a thicket, from
the growth of underwood. This thicket was so near the back of the dairy
that the two were home in five minutes; yet they found Frolich almost as
impatient as if they had been gone an hour. She asked whether their
heathen worship was done at last, so that all might go to bed, or
whether they were to be kept awake till midnight by more mummery?

Erica replied by showing that Jan was already gone to his loft over the
shed, and begging leave to comb and curl Frolich's hair, and see her to
rest at once. Stiorna was asleep; and Erica herself meant to watch the
cattle this night. They lay couched in the grass, all near each other,
and within view, in the mild slanting sunshine, and here she intended to
sit, on the bench outside the home-shed, and keep her eye on them till
morning.

"You are thinking of the Bishop of Tronyem's c