“‘What nonsense you are all talking!’ said the tall fir tree at length. ‘My top leaf is at this moment loaded with a snowflake—there is something sensible for you to think of.’
“At this moment the hut door opened and a woman came out.
“She wore a dark stuff petticoat made very short, with warm stockings and thick shoes; a yellow close-fitting bodice was girdled round her waist, and from under it came out a white kerchief and very full white sleeves. On her head she wore a high white cap.
“She looked first at the weather, and then turning towards the fall she watched or listened for a few minutes,—but water and rocks and firs were all that eye or ear could find out. Then going up to a line stretched between two of the fir-trees, she felt of some things that hung there to dry.”
“I s’pose that was her clothes line,” said Carl.
“No it wasn’t,” replied the cone,—“I might rather call it her _bread_ line. The things that hung there were great pieces of the inner bark of the pine tree, and looked very much like sheets of foolscap paper.”
“She didn’t make bread out of _them_, I guess,” said Carl.
“Yes she did,” replied the cone. “She made many a loaf of bark bread, by pounding the dry bark and mixing it with flour. It wasn’t particularly bad bread either. So people say—I never tasted it. But the country folks in Norway use it a great deal in hard seasons; and in those woods you often meet great pine trees that have been stripped of their bark, and that have dried and bleached in the weather till they look as if made of bone or marble.
“Well—the pieces of bark were dry, and Norrska began to take them off the line, for of course the snow would not improve them.”
“The good woman that came out of the house. She took them down, and when they were all in a heap at the foot of the tree she began to carry them off to the alpebod—that is the little storehouse I spoke of. Then she went back into the hut for a minute, and when she came out again she had on a long-sleeved grey woollen jacket, and her luur in her hand.”
“The luur is a long trumpet-shaped thing, made of hollow pieces of wood, or pieces of birch bark, tied together, and four or five feet long.”
“Why you shall hear, if you will have patience,” said the cone. “Norrska raised the luur with one hand, and putting her mouth to the little end there came forth of the other sundry sweet and loud sounds, which echoed back and forth among the rocks till they died away, far up the mountain.”