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"I could not help myself," he thought; "when I took up my gun I did not intend to kill the man." Conscience again reminded him of its "Don't!" "And would not every man in Rud Ruver justify me for firing first in self-defence?" Conscience again said "No!" Here the hunter uttered a savage oath, to which Conscience made no reply, for Conscience never speaks back or engages in disputation.
Rud put out his tongue, Pelle went a step further and began to laugh, and they were once more the best of friends. They set up the memorial stone, which had been overturned in the heat of battle, and then sat down hand in hand, to rest after the storm, a little quieter than usual.
When he had gone a little way, Rud hastily lifted a piece of turf at the edge of the stream, pushed something in under it, and jumped into the water; and when Pelle came back with slow, ominous steps, he climbed up the other side and set off at a run. Pelle ran too, in short, quick leaps. He knew he was the quicker, and the knowledge made him frolicsome.
Pelle tried, as he had so often done before, to bend his little brain round the possible tricks of his playmate, but failed. "You may just as well come up close," he said stoutly. "For if I wanted to, I could easily catch you up." Rud came. "Now we'll catch big mice." he said. "That's better fun."
Half-an-hour will take me to my father's house, and I want you to go down to the hut of Francois La Certe; it is nearer than our house, you know and get him to help you." "Surely, Tan, that will be wasted time," objected the Highlander. "Of all the lazy useless scamps in Rud Ruver, Francois La Certe iss the laziest an' most useless." "Useful enough for our purpose, however," returned Davidson.
Pelle's voice quivered with eagerness, and he had to dilate his nostrils to get air enough; his limbs began to tremble. "No only sixty you hit so hard! And I must have the money first, or you may cheat me." "I don't cheat," said Pelle gloomily. But Rud held to his point. Pelle's body writhed; he was like a ferret that has tasted blood.
"It's dead now!" said Pelle, gravely and with conviction. "Yes, I should just think so dead as a herring." Rud had put his ear to the straw and listened. "And now it must be up with God in all His glory right high, high up." Rud sniffed contemptuously. "Oh, you silly! Do you think it can crawl up there?" "Well, can't mice crawl, I should like to know?" Pelle was cross.
It was not long before a mouse popped out into the bottle, which they then corked. What should they do with it? Pelle proposed that they should tame it and train it to draw their little agricultural implements; but Rud, as usual, got his way it was to go out sailing.
Hardly, indeed, in many places, a "rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with upcountry produce to the sea.
"Now isn't that only a lie?" he said, and licked his shoulder where he had been bitten by a mosquito. It was said that the chemist gave thirty-five ores apiece for dragon-flies. "A lie?" exclaimed Rud. "Yes, perhaps it is," he went on meekly. "It must be a lie, for anything like that always is. You might give me yours too!" But Pelle would not do that.
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