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| - Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Røverstuen, 1827 TOWARD the west end of Aunsbjerg woods there is an open place, quite a good-sized green surrounded by venerable beech trees. Every year, on the afternoon of Whitsunday, most of the people who live in the surrounding parishes gather there. Many houses are standing empty that day, or they are guarded only by the blind and the bedridden; for the lame and the cripples--provided they have their eyesight--must at least once a year enjoy the forest newly in leaf and bring home a light green beech bough--like Noah's dove--to the dark dwelling which is often a Noah's ark in miniature. What fun! What crowds! The horse pasture--for that is the name by which this gathering-place is known--is like an enormous beehive: constant stir, everlasting thronging back and forth, in and out, all busy only with sucking up the honey of joy, drinking in the exhilarating summer air. How they hurry, how they flutter from flower to flower, greet each other, touch hands, part again, intimately, lightly, hurriedly! How many a young swain has not here found the queen of his heart! How faithfully the lovesick boy follows his queen bee! Far from the great hive one hears an incessant humming and buzzing--the bees are swarming. As we get nearer, the noise grows louder and the monotonous mass of sound dissolves itself into cries, singing, laughter, snapping of beech leaves, music of fiddles and flutes. The crowd surges in and out of the green edges of the forest, the peasants in their Sunday best, the gentlefolk in smart summer clothes, the gentlemen in black, the ladies in white. Is there dancing? Yes, a ball in the forest, dancing on the elastic greensward. Don't you see over there by the beech the village fiddler high above the surrounding crowd? Don't you see between the flower-trimmed hats how quickly his bow flies up and down? And there is a real quadrille, a genuine schottische. "Am I in the Deer Garden? or in Charlottenlund?" you ask. "Look at the vehicles, the handsome carriages! Coachmen in livery, horses with silver-mounted harness, tents with restaurants, serving cold cuts and pastry! Coffeepots over the fire! Families gathering in the grass around their lunch baskets!" You are in the horse pasture. This is the vespers on Whitsunday in Lysgaard district, the day of homage to beautiful and ever-young Nature, the levee of the forest, the triumph of summer. Thus it is celebrated till the sun goes down, and the forest is once more left to the birds and animals that have been for a time frightened away. Formerly only the peasants in the two or three nearest parishes assembled here. But the innocent, joyous feast itself is surely an old custom, perhaps as old as the forest itself. Ten years after the event concluded in our last chapter, the summer festival was held as usual in the horse pasture. A man from whose grandson I heard the story in my young days has described it as follows: "It was the first year I served at Kjaersholm as bailiff of the estate. My sweetheart lived at Vium; she was distantly related to the pastor's family. Whitsunday she had asked me to meet her in the horse pasture, and we both came so early that we were the first couple there. We walked around for an hour or two until the noise and the sound of a violin told us the people were gathering. We went over there and sat down to look at the dancers. Presently I saw a party approaching on the path from Aunsbjerg, consisting of two fine gentlemen, a lady, and two little boys. As I was a stranger in the neighborhood, I asked my sweetheart who they were. "Hush," she said. "It's the family. The large, stout man is the old squire, who became a widower five years ago. The young man with the scar on his cheek is his son-in-law, the woman his daughter, and the two little boys their children. Ten years ago the young gentleman carried her off in the night. As long as the old mistress lived, any reconciliation was out of the question, but after she was dead the old squire relented, and asked them to come and live with him. When he dies they will inherit the house and the estate." They remained standing there a while, amusing themselves by looking at the peasants and giving them some money for drinks. On a windfallen trunk two elderly men were sitting with a mug of ale between them and smoking their pipes. The gentlefolks went over to them, and at that they rose and took their pipes out of their mouths. "Don't get up," I heard the young gentleman saying. "Now you're better friends than when you struck fire for Niels's pipe at Karup river." "Yes, my lord," said the older of the men addressed with a smile. "There's no animal so small it doesn't fight for its life. It looked bad, but turned out well." The gentlefolks laughed. "Take care," said the old squire as they went away, "that you don't get caught in the antlers of the stag you're riding there." Again they laughed heartily, and I could hear the guffaws of the Aunsbjerg squire, which sounded hollow as the call of the bittern deep in the woods. I asked my sweetheart what all this meant and who the two old men were. "The one," she said, "in the green coat with the gray hat is the gamekeeper. The other, in the brown suit, is Mads, the under-ranger, who lives near by and whom the young gentleman brought with him when he came. That talk about the stag I'll explain to you." As she was doing so, and at the same time telling me the whole story of the young people's secret engagement, my eyes fell on a couple who were dancing all by themselves while all the others stood gaping at them. "Who are they?" I said, "they look rather out of the ordinary, the young fellow especially, with his yellow leather breeches and the blue jacket with such a lot of buttons and with the queer cap on his head." "He's no young fellow," she said, "but a married man, and it's his wife he's dancing with." "It's a curious dance," I cried; "he stamps so hard in the ground and struts around her like a bristling turkey cock. That's no country dance." "They say it's Hungarian," she answered, "for he's from Turkey and came here with the young master back from the war. He's clerk and gardener and jack of all trades at the manor. His wife has been maid to the mistress for many years, and they do say it was she who helped her the time she ran away from her parents." And so the story is at an end. Several generations lie between it and us. Bells have rung and hymns been sung over many of their descendants since the persons I have written about went to rest. Both the old squire and the young master have long since been forgotten, and no one knows anything about Black Mads. The manor has often changed hands, the land has been sold and divided. Only the robbers' den lives on in a dark and confused tradition. In the great heath, miles west of Karup river, there are some heather-grown hills which are still called, and always will be called by that sinister name. But no one remembers that it was once a refuge for tender and faithful love, a heaven under the earth.
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