Part 3 (1/2)

”Do you think perhaps you could bring up a good-sized basket, or a box?”

”I've ordered some gla.s.s windows,” said Isak. ”and a couple of painted doors. I'll have to fetch them up,” said he in his lordly way.

”Ay well, then. It's no great matter about the basket.”

”What did you want with a basket? What's it for?”

”What's it for?... Oh, haven't you eyes in your head!”

Isak went off deep in thought. Two days later he came back, with a window and a door for the parlour, and a door for the bedroom; also he had hung round his neck in front a good-sized packing-case, and full of provisions to boot.

”You'll carry yourself to death one day,” said Inger.

”Ho, indeed!” Isak was very far indeed from being dead; he took out a bottle of medicine from his pocket--naphtha it was--and gave it to Inger with orders to take it regularly and get well again. And there were the windows and the painted doors that he could fairly boast of; he set to work at once fitting them in. Oh, such little doors, and secondhand at that, but painted up all neat and fine again in red and white; 'twas almost as good as having pictures on the walls.

And now they moved into the new building, and the animals had the turf hut to themselves, only a lambing ewe was left with Cow, lest she should feel lonely.

They had done well, these builders in the waste: ay, 'twas a wonder and a marvel to themselves.

Chapter II

Isak worked on the land until the frost act in; there were stones and roots to be dug up and cleared away, and the meadow to be levelled ready for next year. When the ground hardened, he left his field work and became a woodman, felling and cutting up great quant.i.ties of logs.

”What do you want with all these logs?” Inger would say.

”Oh, they'll be useful some way,” said Isak off-handedly, as though he had no plan. But Isak had a plan, never fear. Here was virgin forest, a dense growth, right close up to the house, a barrier hedging in his fields where he wanted room. Moreover, there must be some way of getting the logs down to the village that winter; there were folk enough would be glad of wood for firing. It was sound enough, and Isak was in no doubt; he stuck to his work in the forest, felling trees and cutting them up into logs.

Inger came out often, to watch him at work. He took no notice, but made as if her coming were no matter, and not at all a thing he wished for her to do; but she understood all the same that it pleased him to have her there. They had a strange way, too, of speaking to each other at times.

”Couldn't you find things to do but come out here and get stark frozen?” says Isak.

”I'm well enough for me,” says Inger. ”But I can't see there's any living sense in you working yourself to death like you do.”

”Ho! You just pick up that coat of mine there and put it on you.”

”Put on your coat? Likely, indeed. I've no time to sit here now, with Goldenhorns ready to calve and all.”

”H'm, Calving, you say?”

”As if you didn't know! But what do you think now about that same calf. Let it stay and be weaned, maybe?”

”Do as you think; 'tis none of my business with calves and things.”

”Well, 'twould be a pity to eat up calf, seems to me. And leave us with but one cow on the place.”

”Don't seem to me like you'd do that anyway,” says Isak.

That was their way. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth.