seagulls coming all the way up from the coast to settle on
the fields there in the wilderness. Isak's farm was known far and wide
to all wild creatures. And what of Eleseus and little Sivert when they
saw the gulls? Oh, 'twas some strange birds from ever so far away; not
so many of them, just six white birds, all exactly alike, waddling
this way and that about the fields, and pecking at the grass now and
then.

"Father, what have they come for?" asked the boys.

"There's foul weather coming out at sea," said their father. Oh, a
grand and mysterious thing to see those gulls!

And Isak taught his sons many other things good and useful to know.
They were of an age to go to school, but the school was many miles
away down in the village, out of reach. Isak had himself taught the
boys their A B C on Sundays, but 'twas not for him, not for this born
tiller of the soil, to give them any manner of higher education; the
Catechism and Bible history lay quietly on the shelf with the
cheeses. Isak apparently thought it better for men to grow up without
book-knowledge, from the way he dealt with his boys. They were a joy
and a blessing to him, the two; many a time he thought of the days
when they had been tiny things, and their mother would not let him
touch them because his hands were sticky with resin. Ho, resin, the
cleanest thing in the world! Tar and goats' milk and marrow, for
instance, all excellent things, but resin, clean gum from the fir--not
a word!

So the lads grew up in a paradise of dirt and ignorance, but they were
nice lads for all that when they were washed, which happened now and
again; little Sivert he was a splendid fellow, though Eleseus was
something finer and deeper.

"How do the gulls know about the weather?" he asked.

"They're weather-sick," said his father. "But as for that they're no
more so than the flies. How it may be with flies, I can't say, if they
get the gout, or feel giddy, or what. But never hit out at a fly, for
'twill only make him worse--remember that, boys! The horsefly he's
a different sort, he dies of himself. Turns up suddenly one day in
summer, and there he is; then one day suddenly he's gone, and that's
the end of him."

"But how does he die?" asked Eleseus.

"The fat inside him stiffens, and he lies there dead."

Every day they learned something new. Jumping down from high rocks,
for instance, to keep your tongue in your mouth, and not get it
between your teeth. When they gr