The drummer was not slow to follow this counsel.  He crept out the moment the sun began to burn, and cleared the fence with one good bound.

In less than no time he was down in the valley again.

And far, far away towards sunrise in the mountains, he heard the sound of her langelur.

He threw his drum across his shoulder, and hied him off to the manoeuvres at Moen.

But never would he play rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the lasses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue Mountains before he was well aware of it.

* * * * *

[1] A long slow dance, and the music to it.

[2] A Saeter (Swed. saeter) is a remote pasturage with huts upon it, where the cows are tended and dairy produce prepared for market and home use during the summer.

[3] A country dance of a boisterous jig-like sort.

[4] A long wooden trumpet.

* * * * *

“IT’S ME.”

[Illustration:  “IT’S ME.”]

“IT’S ME”

They had chatted so long about the lasses down in the valley; and what a fine time they had of it there, that Gygra’s[1] daughter grew sick and tired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side.  She was bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.

“Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and tidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron rake,” said the dwellers in the mountains.

So Gygra’s daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the foss steamed and the storm whirled round about her.  Down she went to the ground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.

* * * * *

One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the general-dealer’s kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.

“You must be cook, then,” said Madame[2].  It seemed to her that the wench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no bones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing.  So they took her on.

She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too.  The first time she carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the kitchen door that she burst its hinges.  And however many times the carpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she burst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.

When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up higgledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and tables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never seemed to grow less.

Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.

When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and scrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would no doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn’t broken to bits beneath her hands.  And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought to be done, she only gasped and gaped.