tain, was probably their work. By that they must have gone when they wished to visit säter folk on the other side of the mountain. The wretched road running northwest, toward Sunne, must once have been an old goat-path, and westward they could hardly have had any passage at all. To the west lay swampy bottomlands, through which ran a tortuous river. When the shepherdess stood upon the flat stone outside her säter cabin, she could see her home-farm on the other side of the dale; but to get there, she had to go a long way round, to north or southward.
The herdsmen must have wandered up from the south mostly, for Vilarsten, or Resting-stone, where they were wont to rest after their long tramp, still lay at the roadside, just south of the farm. But there was something about that road that made people afraid to venture out on it after dark.
At the time that Mårbacka was a summer säter there lived in the parish of Sunne a priest who was so harsh and exacting that a man who had been a servant in his home a few months went and hanged himself. The priest, when he learned what had happened, without stopping to think, cut the body down and carried it out into the yard. Then, because he had touched a suicide, and for no other reason, he was regarded as polluted and disgraced. The people of Sunne would not allow him to set foot in the church, which remained closed until another clergyman was called.
The Sunne priest used also to officiate at Åmtervik,
