Forest-shagged ranges lay below her on all sides; the valley was but a cleft betwixt the huge fells, and the side-glens still lesser clefts; there were many such, yet was there little of dale and much of fell. All around grey peaks, flaming with golden lichen, rose above the sea of forest, and far off, on the very brink of heaven, stood blue crests flashing here and there with snow, and melting, before their eyes, into the grey-blue and pure white summer-clouds. But northeastwards, nearer by—just beyond the sæter woods—lay a cluster of mighty slate-coloured domes with streaks of new-fallen snow down their slopes. These Kristin guessed to be the Boar Fells she had heard tell of, for they were indeed like naught but a herd of heavy boar wending inland that had just turned their backs upon the parish. Yet Arne told her ’twas a half-day’s ride to get even so far. Kristin had ever thought that could she but win over the top of the home-fells she would look down upon another parish like their own, with tilled farms and dwellings, and ’twas great wonder to her now to see how far it was betwixt the places where folks dwelt. She saw the small yellow and green flecks down below in the dale-bottom, and the tiny clearings with their grey dots of houses amid the hill forests; she began to take tale of them, but when she had reckoned three times twelve, she could keep count of them no longer. Yet the human dwelling-places were as nothing in that waste. She knew that in the wild woods wolves and bears lorded it, and that under every stone there dwelt trolls and goblins and elfinfolk, and she was afraid, for no one knew the number of them, but there must be many times more of them than of Christian men and women. Then she called aloud on her father, but he could not hear, for the blowing of the wind—he and his men were busy rolling heavy stones up the bare mountain top to pile round the timbers of the beacon. But Isrid came to the children and showed Kristin where the fell west of Vaage lay. And Arne pointed out the Grayfell, where folk from the parish took reindeer in pits, and where the King’s falcon-catchers lay in stone huts. That was a trade Arne thought to take to some day—but if he did he would learn as well to train the birds for the chase—and he held his arms aloft as though to cast a hawk. Isrid shook her head. “’Tis a hard and evil life, that, Arne Gyrdsön—’twould be a heavy sorrow for your mother, boy, should you ever come to be a falcon-catcher. None may earn his bread in those wild hills except he join in fellowship with the worst of men—aye, and with them that are worse still.” Lavrans had come toward them and had heard this last word: “Aye,” says he, “there’s more than one hide of land in there that pays neither tax nor tithe—” “Yes, many a thing must you have seen,” said Isrid coaxingly, “you who fare so far afield—”