e should pay for it.

And off they ran again, she in front, and he behind.

Now and again she turned round and laughed and gibed, and gave a toss
and a twist, so that it looked as if her long wavy hair were writhing
and wriggling and twisting like a serpent's tail.

At last she turned round on the top of the hill, laughed, and held out
his drumsticks towards him.

But now he was determined to catch her. He was so near that he made grab
after grab at her; but just as he was about to lay hold of her hard by a
fence, she was over it, while he tumbled after her into the enclosure of
a homestead.

Then she cried and shouted up to the house, "Randi, and Brandi, and
Gyri, and Gunna!"

And four girls came rushing down over the sward.

But the last of them, who had a fine ruddy complexion and heavy
golden-red hair, stood and greeted him so graciously with her downcast
eyes, as if she was quite distressed that they should play such wanton
pranks with a strange young man.

She stood there abashed and uncertain, poor thing! just like a child,
who knows not whether it should say something or not; but all the while
she sidled up nearer and nearer to him. Then, when she was so close to
him that her hair almost touched him, she opened her blue eyes wide, and
looked straight at him.

But she had a frightfully sharp look in those eyes of hers.

"Rather come with me, and thou shalt have dancing--or art thou tired, my
lad?" cried a girl with blue-black hair, and a wild dark fire in her
eyes. She tripped up and down, and clapped her hands. She had white
teeth and hot breath, and would have dragged him off with her.

"Tie thyself up behind first, black Gyri!" giggled the others.

And immediately she let the lad go, and wobbled and twisted, and went
backwards so oddly.

He couldn't help staring after the black lassie, who stood and writhed
and twisted so uncomfortably, as if she were concealing something behind
her, and had, all at once, become so meek.

But the fine bright girl with the slim slender waist, who had rushed on
before him, and who seemed to him the loveliest of them all, began to
laugh at him again and tease him.

Run as he might, he shouldn't catch her, she jibed and jeered; never
should he find his drumsticks again, she said.

But then her mood shifted right round, and she flung herself down
headlong, and began to cry. She had followed his drumming the whole day,
she said, and never had she heard any fellow