Part 8 (1/2)

As I came home from school the next day I went round by Madam Land's.

Carolus stood in the yard eating Madam Land's chicken-feed and sour milk with excellent appet.i.te. His big red comb hung down over one eye. The other eye, that was free, he turned towards me as if he would say, ”I know you well enough, Mistress Inger Johanne, but go your way--I intend to stay here for good and all.”

”Well,” I thought, ”let them scold as they please about you, Carolus; you are surely the most beautiful c.o.c.k in all the world--but you are mine, you must remember.”

When evening came I had studied out a plan for catching Carolus without Madam Land's seeing me. She kept her hens in a part of the wood-shed that was boarded off. Behind this was an open field, and high up in the back wall, right under the roof, there was a little window that always stood open. Through that window I meant to go to get Carolus. There was an old ladder in our barn; I got Peter and Karsten to carry it down the hill and set it up under the window. Both Peter and Karsten wanted to climb up, but I said no; such a difficult undertaking no one but myself could manage.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening and growing dark. I climbed the ladder and got to the top round all right. But whether it was that the ladder was rotten or that Peter and Karsten let go of it,--I had no sooner got hold of the window-sill and dragged myself in than down fell the ladder, breaking all to pieces as it fell.

So there I was in a pretty fix! And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below! I was furiously angry with them, especially at the way Peter laughed. When Peter laughs it is just as if some one had suddenly tickled him in the stomach; he doubles himself together, twists like a worm, and laughs without making a sound. But Karsten roared at the top of his voice.

”Will you stop your laughing, Karsten? You will betray me making such a noise.”

”How will you get down again?”

”Oh, I'll jump down.” It was certainly ten or twelve feet to the ground.

”Now I am going in after Carolus; I'll drop him down from here, and you must be sure to catch him.”

I groped my way down the half-dark stairway from the loft, stumbled along, in the pitch-black darkness of the shed, over a chopping-block and a heap of shavings, and at last got to the part of the wood-shed where the hens were. I opened the door softly and fumbled with my hand along the roost they were sitting on. But, O dear! O dear! such a squawking and screeching! You haven't the least idea how Madam Land's hens could squawk. It was exactly as if I were murdering them all at once. Outside of the wall I could hear Karsten fairly howling with laughter. I kept fumbling around in the dark, for I wanted to find Carolus. I think I got hold of every single hen; all their beaks were stretched wide, letting out one and the same piercing squawk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: And how Karsten and Peter laughed down below!--_Page 109._]

Then I heard the door of Madam Land's kitchen thrown open, and footsteps across the yard--then Madam Land's voice, ”Come with your stick, Land, there are thieves in the hen-house.” The door of the wood-shed was opened and Madam Land's maid burst in and saw me. ”It is the judge's Inger Johanne, madam,” she called.

”Is it that spindleshanks again?” I heard Madam Land say--yes, she really said ”spindleshanks”; but to me she only said, ”Your c.o.c.k is not here, girl; he has not been here all day--not for two or three days, I believe.”

”But he was here this morning.”

”Not at all. You didn't see straight. He is not here, I tell you.”

I ran home completely at a loss. What in the world had become of Carolus? The next day I searched everywhere. I went around to all the houses in the neighborhood and asked after my c.o.c.k. No, no one had seen him anywhere.

Then all at once a frightful suspicion arose in my mind: Madam Land had cut off Carolus' head!

Oh, what a shame, what a shame!--what a shame for her to do that! How I cried that day! It did no good for them to say at home that perhaps Carolus would come back, and that even if he didn't, it wasn't at all sure that Madam Land had made an end of him; he might easily have just gone astray himself.

No, I didn't believe that for a moment. It was Madam Land who had murdered him, and I thought it was mighty queer of Father that he wouldn't put her on bread and water for twenty days, for she deserved it.

The only thing that consoled me was that I myself never had to see Carolus served up in white sauce in a covered dish on the dinner table.

Never--never in the world--would I have tasted a bit of Carolus!

Well, something always does happen to pets--think of Uncle Ferdinand's monkey.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTMAS MUMMING