Hund shuddered at the thought, as it recalled what he had seen and heard at the islet. Erica saw this, and sternly repeated--
"Go and bring back Rolf from the deeps, and then I will cease to hate you."
As Erica slowly returned into Peder's house, Oddo ran past, and was there before her. He closed the door when she had entered, put his hand within hers, and said--
"Did Rolf really tell you that he should be safe anywhere near Vogel islet?"
"Yes," sighed Erica, "safe from the pirates. That was his answer when I begged him not to go so far down the fiord; but Rolf always had an answer when one asked him not to go into danger."
"Erica, you went one trip with me, and I know you are brave. Will you go another? Will you go to the islet and see what Rolf could have meant about being safe there?"
Erica brightened for a moment, and perhaps would have agreed to go; but Peder came in, and Peder said he knew the islet well, and that it was universally considered that it was now inaccessible to human foot, and that that was the reason why the fowl flourished there as they did in no other place. Erica must not be permitted to go so far down among the haunts of the pirates. Instead of this, her mistress had just decided that, as there were no present means of getting rid of Hund, and as Erica could not be expected to remain just now in his presence, she should set off immediately for the mountain, and request Erlingsen to come home.
Under Peder's urgency she made up her bundle of clothes, took in her hand her lure,[3] with which to call home the cattle in the evenings, bade her mistress farewell privately, and stole away without Hund's knowledge.
[3] The lure is a wooden trumpet, nearly five feet long, made of two hollow pieces of birch-wood, bound together throughout the whole length with slips of willow. It is used to call the cattle together on a wide pasture.
Wandering with unwilling steps farther and farther from the spot where she had last seen Rolf, Erica dashed the tears from her eyes, and looked behind her at the entrance of a ravine which would hide from her the fiord and the dwelling she had left. Thor islet lay like a fragment of the leafy forest cast into the blue waters, but Vogel islet could not be seen. It was not too far down to be seen from an elevation like this, but it was hidden behind the promontories by which the fiord was contracted. She looked behind her no more, but made her way rapidly through the ravine; the more rapidly because she had seen a man ascending by the same path at no great distance, and she had little inclination to be joined by a party of wandering Laplanders, still less by any neighbour from the fiord who might think civility required that he should escort her to the seater. This wayfarer was walking at a pace so much faster than hers that he would soon pass, and she would hide among the rocks beside the tarn at the head of the ravine till he had gone by.