him with a look of terror.

[Illustration: HOEL FARM]

Pooh! it was nothing, after all, but a little girl, well bundled up
against the cold. Bearhunter did not know her--but wait a bit! he
thought he had seen that pail before. At any rate it would be absurd to
try to frighten this queer little creature.

His tail began to wag involuntarily as he walked across the road to
take a sniff at the pail.

The little girl did not understand his action at once. Stepping back in
alarm, she caught her heels in her long frock and down she tumbled by
the side of the road. Bearhunter darted off instantly; but after
running a short distance toward the house he stopped and looked at her
again, making his eyes as gentle as he could and wagging his tail
energetically. With Bearhunter that wagging of the tail meant hearty,
good-natured laughter.

Then the little girl understood. She got up, smiled, and jogged slowly
after him. Bearhunter trotted leisurely ahead, looking back at her from
time to time. He knew now that she had an errand at Hoel Farm, and that
he was therefore in duty bound to help her.

Thus it was that Lisbeth Longfrock of Peerout Castle made her entrance
into Hoel Farm.

* * * * *

Peerout Castle was perched high above the Upper Farms, on a crag that
jutted out from a barren ridge just under a mountain peak called "The
Big Hammer." The real name of the little farm was New Ridge,[1] and
"Peerout Castle" was only a nickname given to it by a joker because
there was so fine an outlook from it and because it bore no resemblance
whatever to a castle. The royal lands belonging to this castle
consisted of a little plot of cultivated soil, a bit of meadow land
here and there, and some heather patches where tiny blueberry bushes
and small mountain-cranberry plants grew luxuriantly. The castle's
outbuildings were a shabby cow house and a pigsty. The cow house was
built against the steep hillside, with three walls of loosely built
stone, and its two stalls were dug half their length into the hill. The
tiny pigsty was built in the same fashion.

[1] It is customary in Norway for each farm, however small, to
have a name.

As for the castle itself, that was a very, very small, turf-roofed
cabin lying out on the jutting crag in the middle of the rocky ridge.
It had only one small window, with tiny panes of glass, that looked out
over the valley. And yet, in whatever part of