But then he calmed down somewhat after a while, and asked little Marit whether she really did not dare to go home. The child sobbed and cried, and declared that it was utterly impossible. The school-master then said that Thorvald, who was the eldest of those remaining, should go with her through the wood. "No, he has seen the bear himself," cried Marit; "it was he who told us about it." Thorvald shrank within himself, where he was sitting, especially when the school-master looked at him and drew the ferule affectionately through his left hand. "Have you seen the bear?" he asked, quietly. "Well, at any rate, I know," said Thorvald, "that our overseer found a bear's den up in the priest's wood, the day he was out ptarmigan shooting." "But have you seen the bear yourself?" "It was not one, it was two large ones, and perhaps there were two smaller ones besides, as the old ones generally have their last year's cubs and this year's, too, with them." "But have _you_ seen them?" reiterated the school-master, still more mildly, as he kept drawing the ferule between his fingers. Thorvald was silent for a moment. "I saw the bear that Lars, the hunter, felled last year, at any rate." Then the school-master came a step nearer, and asked, so pleasantly that the boy became frightened,-- "Have you seen the bears up in the parsonage wood, I ask?" Thorvald did not say another word. "Perhaps your memory did not serve you quite right this time?" said the school-master, taking the boy by the jacket collar and striking his own side with the ferule. Thorvald did not say a word; the other children dared not look that way. Then the school-master said earnestly,-- "It is wicked for a priest's son to tell lies, and still more wicked to teach the poor peasant children to do such things." And so the boy escaped for that time. But the next day at school (the teacher had been called up to the priest's and the children were left to themselves) Marit was the first one to ask Thorvald to tell her something about the bear again. "But you get so frightened," said he. "Oh, I think I will have to stand it," said she, and moved closer to her brother. "Ah, now you had better believe it will be shot!" said Thorvald, and nodded his head. "There has come a fellow to the parish who is able to shoot it. No sooner had Lars, the hunter, heard about the bear's den up in the parsonage wood, than he came running through seven whole parishes with a rifle as heavy as the upper mill-stone, and as long as from here to Hans Volden, who sits yonder." "Mercy!" cried all the children. "As long?" repeated Thorvald; "yes, it is certainly as long as from here to yonder bench." "Have you seen it?" asked Ole Boeen.