But that story of the bear at the saeter Petter and Karsten had to hear all summer long, for they were just as puffed up as ever.

Nothing impresses such conceited boys, you know.

CHAPTER XV

LOST IN THE FOREST

Oh, that awful, awful time! Even now I can wake in the middle of the night, start up in bed and stare around frightened and trembling, for I dream that I am in the dark forest alone, as I was that time at Goodfields. Well, I wasn't absolutely alone, but I was the oldest, you see, and so I had all the responsibility for both of us, and that is almost worse than to be alone.

It was little brother Karl who was with me. We children were going to have a blueberry party--that was the beginning of the whole thing. We wanted to treat all the grown-up boarders, and Mother Goodfields, and the maids too. They should all have blueberries with powdered sugar, nothing else; anyway that was enough. But we should need a lot of blueberries, oh, a frightful lot of them!

So we went off, each choosing his own clump of bushes, and picked and picked; and then Karlie-boy and I got lost. Now, you shall hear.

It was in the morning, a very hot morning. The air in the valley had been perfectly still all night. We had slept beside open windows with only a sheet over us.

Immediately after breakfast I flew to the forest, for I knew a place where I wanted to pick berries all by myself. Just as I was climbing over the fence of the home hill-pasture, Karl saw me and called out, "I want to go with you--it's mean of you--oh! oh! to run away from me--I want to go too."

He made such a hullabaloo with his screaming that I had to stop and wait for him. But one ought never in the world to humor screeching children, for no good comes of it. How much better it would have been for Karl if he had not been with me that long frightful day in the forest, and that queer evening in crazy Helen's hut,--for that is where we finally found ourselves.

Yes, when I have children, I shall be awfully strict and decided with them.

It was cool there in the forest. The sunshine came in only in golden stripes and spots. Never in my life have I seen so many blueberries and such high blueberry bushes as we found that day. I picked and picked.

Meanwhile Karl ate and ate, till he was nothing but one big blueberry stain,--he smeared himself so with the juice.

"Did Noah have berries with him in the ark?" asked Karl.

"No, indeed."

"Then all the blueberries must have been drowned in the flood."

"Ugh, what a silly you are!"

"Well, anyway, Noah had cannon with him in the ark."

Oh, I get so sick of cannons with Karl! Whatever he talks about, he always mixes up something about cannons in it.

It was unspeakably fresh and still in the forest. I ran from one blueberry patch to another, but you may chop my head off if I understand in the least how it happened that we got lost; for I usually keep my eyes open and have my wits about me too.

All at once Karl sat himself down in a blueberry patch.

"Ugh--blueberries are disgusting," said he.

"That's because you have stuffed yourself with them," I replied.

"I want some bread and b.u.t.ter," said Karl. "And I'm tired--so tired."

"Oh, keep still."

A minute after, it was exactly the same.

"I'm so tired, so tired."

O dear! I should certainly have to take him home. We were in a little open s.p.a.ce. Pine-trees stood close together around it, whispering softly. To save my life, I could not remember which direction we had come from; there were little mounds and moss and blueberry patches and pine-trees everywhere.

Whoever knew such a pickle as this? How in the world had we come here? I couldn't tell--no matter which way I looked. I sprang here and I ran there to find something I recognized, but I got more and more bewildered and Karl grew crosser and crosser. He kicked at his basket of blueberries.

"Horrid old berries! I want to go home--I'm just mad at everything here.

I'm mad as can be."

If you have never been in a great forest, you cannot possibly imagine anything so bewildering. Trees and trees and trees in every direction and nothing else; no clear s.p.a.ce, no opening anywhere. But even yet I wasn't a bit afraid. The sunshine was bright, the forest air fragrant and I had three quarts of blueberries in my basket--three quarts at the very least. But Karl was heavy to drag along and my berry basket weighed down my other arm, and there was no end to the trees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: How we wandered,--round and round, up and down, hither and thither.--_Page 208._]

O me! How we wandered,--round and round, up and down, hither and thither! We would go ten steps in one direction, then five steps in another--I didn't know where we had been or where we hadn't. All at once everything seemed to be rough and horrid; great trees, uprooted, lay topsy-turvy in our way, rotten branches were under foot everywhere, and the ground was boggy and swampy. The whole place was dreadful.

I remember perfectly that it was right there that I began to be afraid--so terrified that I felt as if down inside of me I was shivering with fear, for I happened to think that we might meet a bull in the forest,--Kaspar's bull that is horribly fierce; and of all things in the world I am most afraid of a bull.

"Oh, Karlie boy, Karlie boy! We are lost!"

He gave one glance at me and burst out crying. Louder and louder he cried, and heavier and heavier he was to drag along, as if he were a big log that would not budge from its place. It was weird and uncanny somehow,--that he should scream so loud in the silent forest. And if there were a bull anywhere in the forest, even far away, it could hear his crying; and then it would come leaping--it would come leaping----

I listened and listened, I seemed to hear with a thousand ears--and I looked and searched to see if I could not recognize even one tree or one blueberry clump. But no; never in the world had I been in this place before. Then we turned and went in exactly the opposite direction. Ugh!

No, no--the forest was just as thick and dark there. Hark! Did something crash then?

"Oh, do be still, Karlie boy!" I listened, holding my breath; perhaps it was only a bird flying.

Well, now we would go straight on this way. And there was nothing to be afraid of; the bright sun was shining, and I had lots and lots of blueberries, and going this way we would surely get out of the forest.

Thus I comforted myself.

"Pooh! We'll soon find the way out, you and I."

"If we had a cannon, we could fire it off, and then they would hear it at Goodfields," said Karl.

For once I was glad of Karl's cannon. I talked and talked about cannon simply to fix my thoughts on something else than the forest, and Karl dried his tears and asked whether there were any great big cannon, as big as--as the whole earth, and didn't I think that the Pope had more cannon than any one else in the world?

"Hush, Karlie boy! keep still. Do you hear something?"

Yes, it was cow-bells. Oh, perhaps Kaspar's bull was coming, that awful bull. "Oh, hurry, hurry, Karlie boy!" We dashed ahead, over branches and mounds; we ran and ran; I stopped and listened, scarcely breathing.

"Do you hear it, Karlie boy?"

Yes, the cow-bells sounded loud and clear through the silence. Well, anyway, we should soon be out of the forest--I thought I knew where we were now.

"Run, Karlie boy! Run, run." There now! There was an opening in the forest! We rushed forward; but just imagine! We were in that little open place again,--there where everything was so horrid, where the great split tree-trunks lay in the swampy moss,--just where I had begun to have that shivery fear deep down inside of me. We had walked round and round in a circle.