Absaloms Hair | Page 2

himself called it
"Man-smell;" no one who had once put his nose inside could ever
forget it.
Valuable and beautiful skins hung on the walls and covered the floors;
his very bed was nothing else; Harald Kaas lay, and sat, and walked on
skins, and each one of them was a welcome subject of conversation, for
he had shot and flayed every single animal himself. To be sure, there
were those who hinted that most of the skins had been bought from
Brand and Company, of Bergen, and that only the stories were shot and
flayed at home.
I for my part think that this was an exaggeration; but be that as it may,
the effect was equally thrilling when Harald Kaas, seated in his log
chair by the fireside, his feet on the bearskin, opened his shirt to show
us the scars on his hairy chest (and what scars they were!) which had
been made by the bear's teeth, when he had driven his knife, right up to
the haft, into the monster's heart. All the queer tankards, and cupboards,
and carved chairs listened with their wonted impassiveness.
Harald Kaas was sixty, when, in the month of July, he sailed into the
bay accompanied by four ladies whom he had brought from the
steamer--an elderly lady and three young ones, all related to him. They
were to stay with him until August.
They occupied the upper storey. From it they could hear him walking
about and grunting below them. They began to feel a little nervous.
Indeed, three of them had had serious misgivings about accepting the
invitation; and these misgivings were not diminished when, next
morning, they saw Kaas composedly strolling up from the sea stark
naked!

They screamed, and, gathering together, still in their nightgowns, held a
council of war as to the advisability of leaving at once; but when one of
them cried "You should not have called us, Aunt, and then we should
not have seen him," they could not help laughing, and therewith the
whole affair ended. Certainly they were a little stiff at breakfast; but
when Harold Kaas began a story about an old black mare of his which
was in love with a young brown horse over at the Dean's, and which
plunged madly if any other horse came near her, but, on the other hand,
put her head coaxingly on one side and whinnied "like a dainty girl"
whenever the parson's horse came that way--well, at that they had to
give in, as well first as last.
If they had strayed here out of curiosity they must just put up with the
"NIGHT side of nature," as Harald Kaas expressed it, with the stress on
the first word.
For all that they were nearly frightened out of their wits the very next
night, when he discharged his gun right under their windows. The aunt
even asserted that he had shot through her open casement. She
screamed loudly, and the others, starting from their sleep, were out on
the floor before they knew where they were. Then they crouched in the
windows and peeped out, although their aunt declared that they would
certainly be shot--they really must see what it was.
Yes! there they saw him among the cherry and apple trees, gun in hand,
and they could hear him swearing. In the greatest trepidation they crept
back into bed again. Next morning they learned that he had shot at
some night prowlers, one of whom had got "half the charge in his leg,
that he had, Deush take him! It ain't the prowling I mind, but that he
should prowl here. We bachelors will have no one poaching on our
preserves."
The four ladies sat as stiff as four church candles, till at length one of
them sprang up with a scream, the others joining in chorus.
The visitors were not bored; Harald Kaas dealt too much in the
unexpected for that. There was a charm, too, in the great woods, where
there had been no felling since he had come into the property, and there

were merry walks by the riverside and plenty of fish in the river.
They bathed, they took delightful sails in the cutter and drives about the
neighbourhood, though certainly the turn-out was none of the smartest.
The youngest of the girls, Kristen Ravn, presently became less eager to
join in these expeditions. She had fallen in love with the disused east
wing of the house, and there she spent many a long hour, alone by the
open window, gazing out at the great lime- trees which stood straggling,
gaunt, and mysterious.
"You ought to build a balcony here, out towards the sea," she said.
"Look how the water glitters between the limes."
When once she had hit