The Outlaws

The Outlaws
By Selma Lagerlšf
1909
Copyright, 1909, by P. F. Collier & Son Co.
Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron
Ê
ÊÊ A peasant had killed a monk and fled to the woods. He became an
outlaw, upon whose head a price was set. In the forest he met another
fugitive, a young fisherman from one of the outermost islands, who had
been accused of the theft of a herring net. The two became companions,
cut themselves a home in a cave, laid their nets together, cooked their
food, made their arrows, and held watch one for the other. The peasant
could never leave the forest. But the fisherman, whose crime was less
serious, would now and then take upon his back the game they had
killed, and would creep down to the more isolated houses on the
outskirts of the village. In return for milk, butter, arrow-heads, and
clothing he would sell his game, the black mountain cock, the moor hen,
with her shining feathers, the toothsome doe, and the long-eared hare.
ÊÊ The cave which was their home cut down deep into a mountain-side.
The entrance was guarded by wide slabs of stone and ragged
thorn-bushes. High up on the hillside there stood a giant pine, and the
chimney of the fireplace nestled among its coiled roots. Thus the smoke
could draw up through the heavy hanging branches and fade unseen
into the air. To reach their cave the men had to wade through the stream
that sprang out from the hill slope. No pursuer thought of seeking their
trail in this merry brooklet. At first they were hunted as wild animals
are. The peasants of the district gathered to pursue them as if for a
baiting of wolf or bear. The bowmen surrrounded the wood while the

spear carriers entered and left no thicket or ravine unsearched. The two
outlaws cowered in their gloomy cave, panting in terror and listening
breathlessly as the hunt passed on with noise and shouting over the
mountain ranges.
ÊÊ For one long day the young fisherman lay motionless, but the
murderer could stand it no longer, and went out into the open where he
could see his enemy. They discovered him and set after him, but this
was far more to his liking than lying quiet in impotent terror. He fled
before his pursuers, leaped the streams, slid down the precipices,
climbed up perpendicular walls of rock. All his remarkable strength and
skill awoke to energy under the spur of danger. His body became as
elastic as a steel spring, his foot held firm, his hand grasped sure, his
eye and ear were doubly sharp. He knew the meaning of every murmur
in the foliage; he could understand the warning in an upturned stone.
ÊÊ When he had clambered up the side of a precipice he would stop to
look down on his pursuers, greeting them with loud songs of scorn.
When their spears sang above him in the air, he would catch them and
hurl them back. As he crashed his way through tangled underbrush
something within him seemed to sing a wild song of rejoicing. A gaunt,
bare hilltop stretched itself through the forest, and all alone upon its
crest there stood a towering pine. The red brown trunk was bare, in the
thick grown boughs at the top a hawk's nest rocked in the breeze. So
daring had the fugitive grown that on another day he climbed to the
nest while his pursuers sought him in the woody slopes below. He sat
there and twisted the necks of the young hawks as the hunt raged far
beneath him. The old birds flew screaming about him in anger. They
swooped past his face, they struck at his eyes with their beaks, beat at
him with their powerful wings, and clawed great scratches in his
weather-hardened skin. He battled with them laughing. He stood up in
the rocking nest as he lunged at the birds with his knife, and he lost all
thought of danger and pursuit in the joy of the battle. When recollection
came again and he turned to look for his enemies, the hunt had gone off
in another direction. Net one of the pursuers had thought of raising his
eyes to the clouds to see the prey hanging there, doing schoolboy deeds
of recklessness while his life hung in the balance. But the man trembled

from head to foot when he saw that he was safe. He caught for a
support with his shaking hands; he looked down giddily from the
height to which he had climbed Groaning in fear of a fall, afraid of the
birds, afraid of the possibility of being seen, weakened through terror of
everything and anything, he slid back down the tree trunk.