not idle in and out about the hut doing nothing; he set to, clearing timber, felling straight, good sticks, and cutting them flat on two sides. He worked at this all through the day, then he milked the goats and went to bed.
Sadly bare and empty now in the hut; a heavy silence clung about the peat walls and the earthen floor; a deep and solemn loneliness. Spinning-wheel and carding-combs were in their place; the beads, too, were safe as they had been, stowed away in a bag under the roof. Inger had taken nothing of her belongings. But Isak, unthinkably simple as he was, grew afraid of the dark in the light summer nights, and saw Shapes and Things stealing past the window. He got up before dawn, about two o'clock by the light, and ate his breakfast, a mighty dish of porridge to last the day, and save the waste of time in cooking more. In the evening he turned up new ground, to make a bigger field for the potatoes.
Three days he worked with spade and ax by turns; Inger should be coming on the next. 'Twould be but reasonable to have a platter of fish for her when she came—but the straight road to the water lay by the way she would come, and it might seem…. So he went a longer way; a new way, over the hills where he had never been before. Grey rock and brown, and strewed about with bits of heavy stone, heavy as copper or lead. There might be many things in those heavy stones; gold or silver, like as not—he had no knowledge of such things, and did not care. He came to the water; the fly was up, and the fish were biting well that night. He brought home a basket of fish that Inger would open her eyes to see! Going back in the morning by the way he had come, he picked up a couple of the heavy little stones among the hills; they were brown, with specks of dark blue here and there, and wondrous heavy in the hand.
Inger had not come, and did not come. This was the fourth day. He milked the goats as he had used to do when he lived alone with them and had no other to help; then he went up to a quarry near by and carried down stones; great piles of carefully chosen blocks and flakes, to build a wall. He was busy with no end of things.
On the fifth evening, he turned in to rest with a little fear at his heart—but there were the carding-combs and spinning-wheel, and the string of beads. Sadly empty and bare in the hut, and never a sound; the hours were long, and when at last he did hear something like a sound of footsteps outside, he told himself that it was fancy, nothing more. "Eyah, Herregud!"1 he murmured, desolate in spirit. And Isak was not one to use words lightly. There was the tramping of feet again outside, and a moment after something gliding past the window; something with horns, something alive. He sprang up, over to the door, and lo, a vision! "God or the devil," muttered Isak, who did not use words lightly. He saw a cow; Inger and a cow, vanishing into the shed.
If he had not stood there himself and heard it—Inger talking softly to the cow in the shed—he would not have believed. But there he stood. And all at once a black misgiving came into his mind: a clever wife, ay, a manager of wonders—but, after all…. No, it was too much, and that was the only word for it. A spinning-wheel and carding-combs at a pinch; even the beads perhaps, though they were over fine to be come by in any way proper and natural. But a cow, picked up straying on the road, maybe, or in a field—it would be missed in no time, and have to be found.
Inger stepped out of the shed, and said with a proud little laugh:
"It's only me. I've brought my cow along."
"H'm," said Isak.
"It was that made me so long—I couldn't go but softly with her over the hills."
"And so you've brought a cow?" said he.
"Yes," said she, all ready to burst with greatness and riches on earth. "Don't you believe me, perhaps?"
Isak feared the worst, but made no sign, and only said:
"Come inside and get something to eat."
"Did you see her? Isn't she a pretty cow?"
"Ay, a fine cow," said Isak. And speaking as carelessly as he could, he asked, "Where d'you get her?"
"Her name's Goldenhorns. What's that wall to be for you've been building up here? You'll work yourself to death, you will. Oh, come and look at the cow, now, won't you?"
They went out to look, and Isak was in his underclothes, but that was no matter. They looked and looked the cow all over carefully, in every part, and noted all the markings, head and shoulders, buttocks and thighs, where it was red and white, and how it stood.
"How old d'you think she might be?" asked Isak cautiously.
"Think? Why, she's just exactly a tiny way on in her fourth year. I brought her up myself, and they all said it was the sweetest calf they'd ever seen. But will there be feed enough here d'you think?"
Isak began to believe, as he was only too willing to do, that all was well. "As for the feed, why, there'll be feed enough, never fear."
Then they went indoors to eat and drink and make an evening together. They lay awake talking of Cow; of the great event. "And isn't she a dear cow, too? Her second's on the way. And her name's Goldenhorns. Are you asleep, Isak?"
"No."
"And what do you think, she knew me again; knew me at once, and followed me like a lamb. We lay up in the hills a bit last night."
"Ho?"
"But she'll have to be tied up through the summer, all the same, or she'll be running off. A cow's a cow."
"Where's she been before?" asked Isak at last.
"Why, with my people, where she belonged. And they were quite sorry to lose her, I can tell you; and the little ones cried when I took her away."
Could she be making it all up, and coming out with it so pat? No, it wasn't thinkable. It must be true, the cow was hers. Ho, they were getting well-to-do, with this hut of theirs, this farm of theirs; why, 'twas good enough for any one. Ay, they'd as good as all they could wish for already. Oh, that Inger; he loved her and she loved him again; they were frugal folk; they lived in primitive wise, and lacked for nothing. "Let's go to sleep!" And they went to sleep. And wakened in the morning to another day, with things to look at, matters to see to, once again; ay, toil and pleasure, ups and downs, the way of life.
As, for instance, with those timber baulks—should he try to fit them up together? Isak had kept his eyes about him down in the village, with that very thing in mind, and seen how it was done; he could build with timber himself, why not? Moreover, it was a call upon him; it must be done. Hadn't they a farm with sheep, a farm with a cow already, goats that were many already and would be more?—their live stock alone was crowding them out of the turf hut; something must be done. And best get on with it at once, while the potatoes were still in flower, and before the haytime began. Inger would have to lend a hand here and there.
Isak wakes in the night and gets up, Inger sleeping fine and sound after her long tramp, and out he goes to the cowshed. Now it must not be thought that he talked to Cow in any obsequious and disgustful flattery; no, he patted her decently, and looked her over once more in every part, to see if there should, by chance, be any sign, any mark of her belonging to strange owners. No mark, no sign, and Isak steals away relieved.
There lies the timber. He falls to, rolling the baulks, then lifting them, setting them up against the wall in a framework; one big frame for a parlour, and a smaller one—there must be a room to sleep in. It was heavy work, hard-breathing work, and his mind being set on it, he forgot the time. There comes a smoke from the roof-hole of the hut, and Inger steps out and calls to breakfast.
"And
