The old housekeeper used to say it could not have been so very long ago that Mårbacka was first laid under the plow and became a regular homestead. In the old mistress's youth it was still within man's memory that the place had been a summer säter belonging to one of the old peasant farms to the west of the dale, nearer the Fryken.
But when in the world it was that the first herd of cattle grazed there and the first cattle-sheds were built, who could say? Herdsmen can hold to a place for thousands of years without leaving a trace after them. And indeed there was not much here at Mårbacka that had come down from their time.
The name Mårbacka, the old mistress believed, one of the herdsmen had given to the hilly moors below Åsberget, where they drove their horses and cattle to grass. She also thought they and their animals had beaten the roads.
That the herdsmen had broken the south road, along Åsberget, was clear, because from that direction they would have had to come with their cattle. The steep road to the east, which went straight down the moun-
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