The Outlaws | Page 3

He endured the pain as long as his strength would stand it, but one evening, when he stooped to blow up the fire, he fell down and could not rise again. Berg came to his side and told him to lie in the warm bed. Tord groaned in agony, but could not move. Berg put his arm under the boy's body and carried him to the bed. He had a feeling while doing it as if he were touching a clammy snake; he had a taste in his mouth as if he had eaten unclean horseflesh, so repulsive was it to him to touch the person of this common thief. Berg covered the sick boy with his own warm bear-skin rug and gave him water. This was all he could do, but the illness was not dangerous, and Tord recovered quickly. But now that Berg had had to do his companion's work for a few days and had had to care for him, they seemed to have come nearer to one another. Tord dared to speak to Berg sometimes, as they sat together by the fire cutting their arrows.
���� "You come of good people, Berg," Tord said one evening. "Your relatives are the richest peasants in the valley. The men of your name have served kings and fought in their castles."
���� "They have more often fought with the rebels and done damage to the king's property," answered Berg.
���� "Your forefathers held great banquets at Christmas time. And you held banquets too, when you were at home in your house. Hundreds of men and women could find place on the benches in your great hall, the hall that was built in the days before St. Olaf came here to Viken for christening. Great silver urns were there, and mighty horns, filled with mead, went the rounds of your table."
���� Berg looked at the boy again. He sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, pushing back the heavy tangled hair that hung over his eyes. His face had become pale and refined through his illness. His eyes still sparkled in fever. He smiled to himself at the pictures called up by his fancy ? pictures of the great hall and of the silver urns, of the richly clad guests, and of Berg, the Giant, lording it in the place of honor. The peasant knew that even in the days of his glory no one had ever looked at him with eyes so shining in admiration, so glowing in reverence, as this boy did now, as he sat by the fire in his worn leather jacket. He was touched, and yet displeased. This common thief had no right to admire him.
���� "Were there no banquets in your home?" he asked.
���� Tord laughed: "Out there on the rocks where father and mother live? Father plunders the wrecks and mother is a witch. When the weather is stormy she rides out to meet the ships on a seal's back, and those who are washed overboard from the wrecks belong to her."
���� "What does she do with them?" asked Berg.
���� "Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes salves of them, or perhaps she eats them. On moonlit nights she sits out in the wildest surf and looks for the eyes and fingers of drowned children."
���� "That is horrible!" said Berg.
���� The boy answered with calm confidence: "It would be for others, but not for a witch. She can't help it."
���� This was an altogether new manner of looking at life far Berg. "Then thieves have to steal, as witches have to make magic?" he questioned sharply.
���� "Why, yes," answered the boy. "Every one has to do the thing he was born for." But a smile of shy cunning curled his lips, as he added: "There are thieves who have never stolen."
���� "What do you mean by that?" spoke Berg.
���� The boy still smiled his mysterious smile and seemed happy to have given his companion a riddle. "There are birds that do not fly; and there are thieves who have not stolen," he said.
���� Berg feigned stupidity, in order to trick the other's meaning: "How can any one be called a thief who has never stolen?" he said.
���� The boy's lips closed tight as if to hold back the words. "But if one has a father who steals ??" he threw out after a short pause.
���� "A man may inherit house and money, but the name thief is given only to him who earns it."
���� Tord laughed gently. "But when one has a mother ? and that mother comes and cries, and begs one to take upon one's self the father's crime ? and then one can laugh at the hangman and run away into the woods. A man may