"How peaceful is the forest:--true, the hawk is far from kind, I fear he now is striving the plumpest sparrow to find; I fear yon eagle's coming to rob the kid of breath, And yet perchance if long it lived, it might be tired to death. "The woodman fells one tree, and another rots away, The red fox killed the lambkin white at sunset yesterday; The wolf, though, killed the fox, and the wolf itself must die, For Arne shot him down to-day before the dew was dry. "I'll hie me to the valley back--the forest is as bad; And I must see to take good heed, lest thinking drive me mad. I saw a boy in my dreams, though where I cannot tell-- But I know he had killed his father--I think it was in Hell."[11] He came home and told his mother that she might send out in the parish after another herd-boy; he wanted to manage the gard himself. Thus it was arranged; but the mother was always after him with warnings not to overtax himself with work. She used also to prepare such good meals for him at this time that he often felt ashamed; but he said nothing. He was working at a song, the refrain of which was "Over the lofty mountains." He never succeeded in finishing it, and this was chiefly because he wanted to have the refrain in every other line; finally he gave it up. But many of the songs he made got out among the people, where they were well liked; there were those who wished very much to talk with him, especially as they had known him from boyhood up. But Arne was shy of all whom he did not know, and thought ill of them, chiefly because he believed they thought ill of him. His constant companion in the fields was a middle-aged man, called Upland Knut, who had a habit of singing over his work; but he always sang the same song. After listening to this for a few months, Arne was moved to ask him if he did not know any others. "No," was the man's reply. Then after the lapse of several days, once when Knut was singing his song, Arne asked: "How did you chance to learn this _one_?" "Oh, it just happened so," said the man. Arne went straight from him into the house; but there sat his mother weeping, a sight he had not seen since his father's death. He pretended not to notice her, and went toward the door again; but he felt his mother looking sorrowfully after him again and he had to stop. "What are you crying for, mother?" For a while his words were the only sound in the room, and therefore they came back to him again and again, so often that he felt they had not been said gently enough. He asked once more:-- "What are you crying for?" "Oh, I am sure I do not know;" but now she wept harder than ever. He waited a long time, then was forced to say, as courageously as he could:-- "There must be something you are crying about!" Again there was silence. He felt very guilty, although _she_ had said nothing, and _he_ knew nothing.