It was old Enoch who had started blasting here once upon a time. It seemed as if an evil spirit had ruled the forest, or some barren destructive fiend. Everywhere there were ravines, caves, treacherous holes and screes of clattering stones and loose boulders ready to slip away beneath your feet, and everything was enveloped in an almost impenetrable growth of young golden aspen.
And then the autumn moon rose above the forest in the west.
“It really is wonderfully fine,” whispered Herman, fascinated by the romance of this desolate wilderness.
“Yes, it is almost like the Alps,” answered Laura, and groped for him that she might feel him tremble with jealous love. But as soon as she had said it she trembled herself. Yes, she was playing a dangerous game up there among the rough boulders of Old Hök’s overgrown stony wilderness. Laura suddenly felt love clutching her heart with burning fingers. For a moment she gave herself up to this new and painful sensation, but then she became frightened, with the violent fear of a threatened egoism. She jumped up and pushed him away from her:
“No, we must go up to Enoch’s gorge,” he panted. “It is haunted, and up to the old quarrymen’s shed.”
His voice had never sounded so near her, so strangely near. She followed him against her will.
Enoch’s gorge was a perpendicular precipitous gully, blasted out of the rock. They held each others’ hands and crept up to the edge with their heads swimming. It was dark down below. Fancy if he pulls me down! the thought flashed through Laura’s head, and she suddenly tore her hand out of his.
Then they came to the shed. There were stones in front of the door, but Herman rolled them away. Inside something lay on a couple of overturned empty boxes. In the light of a match they saw a few books, a heap of strange stones, shells and horses’ teeth, a dried-up lizard and a broken bottle with fish spawn, by the side of a half-eaten piece of bread and butter.
Then somebody stood in the doorway. It was Tord. He looked unusually tall in the twilight. In spite of his sixteen years he was dressed in breeches and an outgrown sailor blouse, his long wrists sticking out from the sleeves. He stood quite still and stared at the invaders with an expression of fear and anger. And between his legs the fox thrust out his pointed nose and his bright eyes and sniffed. He had only three legs, poor thing, the fourth had been caught in the trap.