Part 17 (2/2)

Into the barn he dashed, Andrine and I at his heels, hastily shutting the door. It was pitch-dark in the barn.

”Was he after you? Where is Petter?”

My heart was pounding. Bears usually knocked a barn-door in with one whack, and here we stood in pitch-black darkness.

Karsten was so out of breath he could scarcely speak.

”Oh! the way he ran! I never would have believed a bear could run so!”

panted Karsten.

”Oh!--oh!--oh!” shrieked some one outside the barn. ”Help! oh, help!”

It was Petter's voice, and we heard also an animal breathing quickly and then something like a growl.

As with one impulse Andrine, Karsten, and I sprang into a stall behind a cow. The bear would surely take the cow first before it took us. How unspeakably frightened I was! Karsten wanted to get behind Andrine and me too, and puffed and pushed himself in, and we got to fighting there in the stall just from sheer fright.

There came a horrible thump against the barn-door, it burst open and Petter Kloed tumbled into the barn on all fours; and leaping on his back was a big black beast.

How Petter howled I could never give you any idea, for such a howl must be heard if you are to know what it was like. Karsten and I shrieked with him; and all the cows got up, rattled their chains, and bellowed.

”Ha ha! Ha ha!” laughed Augusta from the barn-door. ”Did any one ever see such doings! Oh, I really must laugh! I was pretty sure it was the dog, old Burmann. There hasn't been a bear on this mountain the whole year. Shame on you, Burmann, to frighten folk this way!”

”How you did howl, Petter!” said Karsten, coming out of the stall.

”Perhaps you didn't scream,” said Petter Kloed.

They quarreled and disputed till the sparks flew, as to which had been the most scared. But my knees trembled so I had to sit down on a milking-stool, and Andrine cried and sobbed, she had been so frightened.

Karsten got braver and braver.

”I was no more scared out of my wits than I ever am,” said he. ”I screamed only because--because--well, just so that Petter could hear where I was!”

”Such a horrid dog!” said Petter, reaching after Burmann.

”You could just have scratched his back as you do to bears in menageries,” said I. Augusta laughed so that her laughter echoed through the whole place, and I teased them as much as I could. When I really make a point of it, I'm awful at teasing--it is such fun.

”Ugh! Girls are nothing but rubbish,” said Karsten.

”To think that you didn't strangle the bear with such muscles as you have,” I said.

”If you don't keep still!” said Karsten threateningly.

It was such fun! I laughed till my cheeks ached.

My! but that was an awfully jolly and delightful visit to the saeter.

But at night Andrine and I slept in a bed that was as hard as a stone, and Andrine lay the whole night right across the bed and squeezed me almost to death.

In the morning the air and everything was oh, so fres.h.!.+ Our hair blew all over our faces; we washed in the brook and the water was so cold that our finger-nails ached.

After breakfast we started home again. We stood up in the wagon and shouted hurrah as long as we could see Augusta in the saeter hut door, and after that we sang all the way down the mountain.

<script>