Inga sat crouching on the hearth, hugging little Hans to her bosom. She shook and trembled with fear, let her eyes wander around the walls, and now and then moaned at the thought that now they would take little Hans away from her.
"Why don't you open the door for papa?" asked little Hans, wonderingly.
Ah, he too was against her! All the world was against her! And her husband was in league with her enemies!
"Open, I say!" cried Nils, vehemently. "What do you mean by locking the door when decent people come to call upon us?"Should she open the door or should she not? Holding little Hans in her arms, she rose hesitatingly, and stretched out her hand toward the bolt. But all of a sudden, in a paroxysm of fear, she withdrew her hand, turned about, and fled with the child through the back door. The alder bushes grew close up to the walls of the cottage, and by stooping a little she managed to remain unobserved. Her greatest difficulty was to keep little Hans from shouting to his father, and she had to put her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet; for the boy, who had heard the voices without, could not understand why he should not be permitted to go out and converse with his friends the lumbermen. The wild eyes and agitated face of his mother distressed him, and the little showers of last night's rain which the trees shook down upon him made him shiver.
"Why do you run so, mamma?" he asked, when she removed her hand from his mouth.
"Because the bad men want to take you away from me, Hans," she answered, panting.
"Those were not bad men, mamma," the boy ejaculated. "That was Stubby Mons and Stuttering Peter and Lars Skin-breeches. They don't, want to hurt me."He expected that his mamma would be much relieved at receiving this valuable information, and return home without delay. But she still pressed on, flushed and panting, and cast the same anxious glances behind her.
In the meanwhile Nils and his guests had entirely lost their patience. Finding his persuasions of no avail, the former began to thump at the door with the handle of his axe, and receiving no response, he climbed up to the window and looked in. To his amazement there was no one in the room. Thinking that Inga might have gone to the cow-stable, he ran to the rear of the cottage, and called her name. Still no answer.
"Hans," he cried, "where are you?"
But Hans, too, was as if spirited away. It scarcely occurred to Nils, until he had searched the cow- stable and the house in vain, that his wife had fled from the harmless lumbermen. Then the thought shot through his brain that possibly she was not quite right in her head; that this fixed idea that everybody wanted to take her child away from her had unsettled her reason.
Nils grew hot and cold in the same moment as this dreadful apprehension took lodgement in his mind. Might she not, in her confused effort to save little Hans, do him harm? In the blind and feverish terror which possessed her might she not rush into the water, or leap over a precipice? Visions of little Hans drowning, or whirled into the abyss in his mother's arms, crowded his fancy as he walked back to the lumbermen, and told them that neither his wife nor child was anywhere to be found.
"I would ask ye this, lads," he said, finally: "if you would help me search for them. For Inga--I reckon she is a little touched in the upper story--she has gone off with the boy, and I can't get on without little Hans any more than you can."The men understood the situation at a glance, and promised their aid. They had all looked upon Inga as "high-strung" and "queer,"and it did not surprise them to hear that she had been frightened out of her wits at their request for the loan of little Hans.
Forming a line, with a space of twenty feet between each man, they began to beat the bush, climbing the steep slope toward the mountains. Inga, pausing for an instant, and peering out between the tree trunks, saw the alder bushes wave as they broke through the underbrush. She knew now that she was pursued. Tired she was, too, and the boy grew heavier for every step that she advanced. And yet if she made him walk, he might run away from her. If he heard his father's voice, he would be certain to answer. Much perplexed, she looked about her for a hiding-place.
For, as the men would be sure to overtake her, her only safety was in hiding. With tottering knees she stumbled along, carrying the heavy child, grabbing hold of the saplings for support, and yet scarcely keeping from falling. The cold perspiration broke from her brow and a strange faintness overcame her.
"You will have to walk, little Hans," she said, at last. "But if you run away from me, dear, I shall lie down here and die."Little Hans promised that he would not run away, and for five minutes they walked up a stony path which looked like the abandoned bed of a brook.
"You hurt my hand, mamma," whimpered the boy, "you squeeze so hard."She would have answered, but just then she heard the voices of the lumbermen scarcely fifty paces away. With a choking sensation and a stitch in her side she pressed on, crying out in spirit for the hills to hide her and the mountains to open their gates and receive her. Suddenly she stood before a rocky wall some eighty or a hundred feet high. She could go no farther.
