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"Sir, the morning breeze moves the branches, and whistles in the sharp pine-leaves and in the yellow oak-leaves, and rustles the crisp snow." "Rolf, now they are both coming towards us. Now they are standing before us, quite close." "Sir, it is we who get nearer to them as we walk on, and the setting moon throws such long giant-like shadows over the plain."
But the Norwegians of the ninth century had as yet no national feeling; and they regarded King Harold's prohibition against plundering their own shores as absurd and arbitrary. Rollo or Rolf, the son of the king's best friend, Ragnvald, Earl of Möre, undertook to disregard the order.
Rolf had seen, and indeed made, watering troughs, pig troughs, sap troughs, hen troughs, etc., all his life, and he now set to work with the axe and a block of basswood to hew out a trough for a wash bowl. With adequate tools he might have made a good one; but, working with an axe and a stiff arm, the result was a very heavy, crude affair.
Meanwhile, Jarl Rongvold, go thou with Rolf, and bring round the Dragon and the other longships to the fiord, for I mistrust the men of this district, and will fare to the Springs by sea." In accordance with these instructions the jarl brought the King's fleet round without delay. On the following morning they embarked, and set sail for the appointed place of meeting.
Rolf found it amusing as well as useful to make other bark vessels of varying sizes for dippers and dunnage. It was work that he could do now while he was resting and recovering and he became expert. After watching a fairly successful attempt at a box to hold fish-hooks and tackle, Quonab said: "In my father's lodge these would bear quill work in colours."
The Indian nodded. "Give three yelps if you no find me;" then he shouldered a short stick, from one end of which, at a safe distance from his back, hung the bag with the coon. And Rolf went home with the cow. He had acted on hasty impulse in offering to come, but now, in the normal storm state of the household, the difficulties of the course appeared.
"If the crash does not come soon, I shall go out of my wits," he whispered to Rolf. The Wrestler turned upon him a face of such unusual excitement that he was amazed. "Do you not see?" he whispered. "There will not be any crash. I have just begun to understand. It was this he meant when he spoke to you of gaining their friend-ship that they might hear him willingly. Do you not see?"
Sorry as he was, he could not help being amused, and keeping himself hidden a little longer, when he saw Rolf discover the round hole in the snow where the can had sunk, and heard the different opinions of the company as to what this portended. Most were convinced that his curiosity had been his destruction, as they had always prophesied.
Guests are expected at the castle, I understand, and some at the cottage, if so you choose to designate my friend Rolf Morton's abode; sages learned in the law coming to investigate a knotty subject, to unravel a long-continued mystery." "I understand you not," answered Hilda, still continuing to watch the two vessels.
It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do for him, I dare say. Now, cheer up, aunt Lucy; do; that's all I ask of you. Wont you for me?"
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