The head stared at her and did not move, only stared. She felt as if she were standing in icy-cold water up to the chin. She whispered the name of Jesus towards the head and then took to her heels towards the hut, mumbling bits of the catechism while she ran, from the Ten Commandments to the Creed, and she was half dead when at length she was safe in the hut.
“What’s the matter?” asked the farmer’s wife.
The maid was silent. She sat down and said nothing.
“Dear me, what ails thee?” the housewife asked again.
“Yes, it’s more like blaspheming, it is. I saw a deer’s head round by Grey Hill.”
Anne Lyhus had rolled up her sleeves. She was at work salting and kneading a lump of butter.
“Haven’t you seen a deer’s head before this?” she asked.
“Yes, but that deer’s head had eyes like a human being. And worst of all I recognised them!”
“‘Twas the eyes of the Swede. If it’s my last words on earth. I swear they were the eyes of the Ré Valley Swede!”
The moonlight had reached Gaupa in the hut. Bjönn jumped up to him in bed, nosed his head and licked his hair, tail wagging. Gaupa stroked Bjönn’s head.
“Poor doggie mine,” he whispered. The dog lay down beside him, but with raised head, and stared through the window across the marshes.
In a little while the bed started falling over. The bed turned over and Gaupa turned over against the table. It felt as if the bed was trying to throw him out and get rid of him, and he grabbed the skins with both hands, holding on as tight as tight. He had never felt such a sensation before.
There now, he was level again—how delightful! The bed calmed down; but what a number of lakes and brooks there were in that square of moonlight on the floor! A flood of little brooklets.... And then the bed began to tilt again, it turned upside down, and Gaupa clenched his fists, holding on for dear life till the perspiration ran down his skull.
Day dawned. Gaupa was talking to himself with eyes closed, while the stars vanished one by one.
On the brink of the precipice towards the Ré Valley stood Rauten.
He could feel that gadfly constantly stinging in his left shoulder. He nosed the place, but only found the hole where the gadfly had crept in. His skin bled from the bite of that gadfly which bit into him, when the thunder roared, over near Morsæter. What a strange gadfly!
