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Chap. XXXI.
THE FISH AND THE RING.
39
have been to the surrounding population, but
unfortunately there was no one to see them; Jutland was
then a bleak, bare desert, quite uninhabited. One
Sabbath morn the sisters as usual rowed across the
waters of the lake; Bjara held the oars, Linaa steered,
while Dall was busily employed looking out the
morning lessons in her Book of Hours. The bark now touches
land; the sisters leap ashore—when suddenly Bjara
misses from her finger her golden ring, the gift of her
viking father. “ My ring, my ring! ” cries Bjara; “
somebody must have taken it; lost—stolen!”—and she begins
to hunt in every corner of the boat, but without
success ; so, waxing wroth, she invokes maledictions on the
head of the man, woman, or living thing, who may have
deprived her of her ornament. Loud and fearful were
her curses; in vain her sisters tried to pacify her.
“ Bjara, dear Bjara! how can you be so wicked ?”
exclaimed Dall, while Linaa wept bitterly. Their
entreaties were of no avail; but now, as they gain the
church porch, the waters of the lake begin to swell,
overflow, and gradually disperse themselves over the
plain, leaving the bottom dry, and the fishes, eels, carp,
salmon, perch, and flounders, all stranded upon the
heather. “It’s a fish who has swallowed my ring,”
triumphantly exclaims Bjara; and quick and sharp as a
policeman she passes in review the different members of
the finny tribe. The eels wriggle; flounders perform
somersaults in the air—no guilt there; pike open wide
their jaws,—“ Put your finger down if you like,” say they;
“ you’ll catch something, not the ring”—when, reposing
on a bed of reeds, puffing, blowing, she espies a bloated
carp: “ Here’s the culprit,” she exclaims—out with her
bodkin, rips him up without mercy, and draws forth from
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