Young Tord could never weary of looking at this man.  He had never before seen anything so beautiful and powerful.  In his imagination he stood high as the forest, strong as the sea.  He served him as a master and worshipped him as a god.  It was a matter of course that Tord should carry the hunting spears, drag home the game, fetch the water and build the fire.  Berg Rese accepted all his services, but almost never gave him a friendly word.  He despised him because he was a thief.

The outlaws did not lead a robber’s or brigand’s life; they supported themselves by hunting and fishing.  If Berg Rese had not murdered a holy man, the peasants would soon have ceased to pursue him and have left him in peace in the mountains.  But they feared great disaster to the district, because he who had raised his hand against the servant of God was still unpunished.  When Tord came down to the valley with game, they offered him riches and pardon for his own crime if he would show them the way to Berg Rese’s hole, so that they might take him while he slept.  But the boy always refused; and if any one tried to sneak after him up to the wood, he led him so cleverly astray that he gave up the pursuit.

Once Berg asked him if the peasants had not tried to tempt him to betray him, and when he heard what they had offered him as a reward, he said scornfully that Tord had been foolish not to accept such a proposal.

Then Tord looked at him with a glance, the like of which Berg Rese had never before seen.  Never had any beautiful woman in his youth, never had his wife or child looked so at him.  “You are my lord, my elected master,” said the glance.  “Know that you may strike me and abuse me as you will, I am faithful notwithstanding.”

After that Berg Rese paid more attention to the boy and noticed that he was bold to act but timid to speak.  He had no fear of death.  When the ponds were first frozen, or when the bogs were most dangerous in the spring, when the quagmires were hidden under richly flowering grasses and cloudberry, he took his way over them by choice.  He seemed to feel the need of exposing himself to danger as a compensation for the storms and terrors of the ocean, which he had no longer to meet.  At night he was afraid in the woods, and even in the middle of the day the darkest thickets or the wide-stretching roots of a fallen pine could frighten him.  But when Berg Rese asked him about it, he was too shy to even answer.

Tord did not sleep near the fire, far in in the cave, on the bed which was made soft with moss and warm with skins, but every night, when Berg had fallen asleep, he crept out to the entrance and lay there on a rock.  Berg discovered this, and although he well understood the reason, he asked what it meant.  Tord would not explain.  To escape any more questions, he did not lie at the door for two nights, but then he returned to his post.