Page:Round the Yule Log.djvu/103

Rh "How!" I asked.

"You must tell him that, Peter," said the captain.

"Well, Lars wouldn't tell me at first," said Peter, "but after I had given him a good dram and a roll of tobacco, he told me all about it."

"'You take the bark of the mountain ash and put it round the break-off,' said Lars, 'and then you scrape three bits of a silver coin which has come down in the family — it must be one of the real good old coins, one that has been out in the wars; and then you scrape three parings of the nail of your little finger in your left hand, and then three barleycorns, if you have not got these handy, take three breadcrumbs and put them all above the shot, and then you might shoot the very devil with it,' he said. 'That's what I did the time I was telling you about, and when the hare came past the fourth time, he fell stone dead the moment I fired,' he said. 'He was a dry little beast, and he was so old that he was nearly black all over. Well, I took him and hung him up by his hind legs to a gnarled birch to clean him, but would you believe me, he kept on bleeding as if he were a young cow, and the dogs were licking up the blood as it ran down the hill. I had to take him with me at last, but somehow I could not find my way, and the blood kept on running off the hare all the time. I came back twice to that gnarled birch-tree, and I thought it was rather odd, as I ought to know my way thereabouts as well as in my own parlour. But of course if you first make a wrong start, you go wrong altogether. Well, thought I, I had better let the dogs find the way, which I did, but when I came past some rocks down there, I saw an old witch right in front of some small birchwood with a cloth on her head, a leather jacket, and black skirt; she was leaning on a crutch-handled stick and looked like a woman from the country.

"'I say, Lars,' said she, 'you have got many a hare in the moors here and I have wished you well, so you might as well have left alone that hare of mine. If you had not had that red dog of yours, you wouldn't have got it either,'

"'I didn't say a word,' said Lars, 'but cut away over Mœrre bog up to Bamsebraaten, where I let the dogs loose. They were soon