Chapter VI: The Farm Casts Its Skin

1

Juvik farm lies facing the fiord on the east, with a steep slope below it; on the north side is an abrupt fir-clad height, and then the fields; southward, beyond the beck, there are birch-woods and meadows, marsh and rocks, one after the other, and then the mountains; bogs to the west, all the way to the crofts and the sea. Round about the houses it is fine and level, better than any other farm in the parish. Eastward the fiord lies open, sparkling and grateful in fine weather, and when a gale blows, you can stand sheltered up at Juvik and listen to it and see how wild and white it can be.--If you come by sea to Juvik, the farm sits there and takes no notice of you, sits there taken up with itself. There is a note about it, the Juvik folk always thought, a fine, deep note that comes from the woods and the fields and from the houses themselves. The old house was low and grey, with only one eye to look at you, an old home, too old to die; the new house was high and strong, with many windows, a real Juviking, that strangers were shy to face; and the rest of the houses were big and firm and of the same mind: This is Juvik; if you have any business here, come on with it.

So it had seemed to Valborg, when she came here for the first time, and she never forgot it. It kept her up, at all times, it cooled her and calmed her when there was need. And she would have the others feel the same, no matter who they were.

“We’ll have to keep our ears open now,” she said to Per one day.

“Pooh!” He scouted it. One mustn’t let such things get a hold of one. It was lies all through. They hadn’t heard a thing--either at the Black Rock or anywhere else!

She couldn’t help looking at him: he was like a man who was ill for want of sleep.--The Black Rock, ay, that was another story.

Did she believe it then?

Believe it? No, she didn’t do that; it wasn’t true, she had heard so many tales among the neighbours. No, it was Juvik she was thinking about. That there they were, and there they were going to stay. “And you hear the same, Per, don’t you?”

And Per heard it. He heard it wherever he went. Ay, he said absently. That was all true enough. But now it seemed to have gone to pieces somehow, the clapper had dropped out of the bell, hadn’t she noticed that? It couldn’t make much difference now what they did with themselves.

Valborg had noticed it. And she had been outspoken with Per lately, was forced into it, and she hadn’t minced matters.--“I dare say,” she said. “But it’s for you to set it going again, Per; you and no one else. Oh yes, there’s that about Jens; but we’ll have to do something about that too.”

“Jens, you say. But we were both in it, one as much as the other.”

“Eh? Oh, you mean that wretched thief who jumped into the sea? But you know very well there’s a worse thing than that--he’s thinking of marrying her.”

“I know,” said Per, and tried to get away.

“Well, but--you don’t _mean_ it, do you?”

“Mean what?”

“To let him marry Daaret?”

All the same, Valborg had to take a look at Per. So worn-out she had never seen him. There had been times when she had wished him to be like that, so that she might be _good_ to him. But now all she said was:

“You’re not out of your senses, Per? You can pull yourself together, can’t you?”

He blinked his eyes and passed his tongue along his teeth, as though he had an answer somewhere there.

“Eh?” Valborg was almost speechless; what was there left to do? She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I tell you once for all, Per--if that happens I’ll not stay here another day!”

“No?” He seemed to come to life. “Well, you know--we might just as well leave here, mightn’t we? Ay, for Juvik--er--it’s not more than big enough for one.”

“So that’s it. That’s how it is. Well, then--”

He was holding a little hammer in his hand, had been looking at it a long time. Now he looked up at her, with a changed face, awake and lively; and at the sight of it Valborg lost her head, as she had always done before; it was no light matter to stand here arguing with Per!

“Juvik--there’s nothing left to turn one’s hand to at Juvik. They’ve put it all to rights before our time, land and houses and everything else, there’s not a scrap more to do.”

“No, but--it’s Juvik!” Valborg could find no more to say, and so she left him.

But it worked within her. She didn’t heed her little boy, who was hanging about her asking for a bite of food, and she forgot to answer when they spoke to her, just opened her mouth and let the answer wait.

Valborg came of the Engdal folk, and they were a hardy race--she didn’t even care to show Per how strong she was. There were a good many things she didn’t care to show him, for you could never tell how he would take it. But today she laid hold of anything she could find, and just _lifted_ it; she carried the washtub full of water across the kitchen, so that the maids stared open-mouthed at her. It struck her that if Per was so mad as to want to run away from his home, then in God’s name she’d have to _hold_ him!--A Juviking he might be, but just you wait!

“So maybe you think ’twas only the farm that brought me here,” she said to herself. “You can think what you like about that. You can think what you like, Per, but now I’ll tell you--”

Valborg came upon Jens out in the yard, he was just taking out the horse. She didn’t look at him, never did if she could help it, but she thought he was fleering behind her back. Next day he passed close to her, while she was in the field laying out linen to bleach. “What can he be nosing after?” she wondered.

He stopped; he looked at her with such unfeigned surprise: was she doing all the work by herself? Where was Daaret, wasn’t she lending a hand? Oh no, maybe she wasn’t up to that. Valborg went on with her work, and then he laughed: “He he, she’s getting so big, is Daaret, haven’t you noticed that? Looks as if there’d soon be a wedding in the house--maybe you’ve guessed that already? But, Valborg, I say! He he, you’ll have to help this poor wife of mine a bit; just at first, eh? You’ll have to make a decent housewife of her. Since you two are going to pull together.”

Valborg straightened herself, put her hand to her back--it pained her--then took her basket and went. Jens saw that her face was flecked with red.--“That’s done it,” he said to himself.--“Now you can just stay there,” she thought.--“All the same, I’ll have to talk to him,” she said, and set down her basket again. She looked him well up and down.

He didn’t really mean it, did he? That he was going to marry one of the _maids?_

Oh, he meant it right enough. If one’s been fishing in the water-butt, you know.

“You garbage!” She was so angry that the tears came into her eyes.

“Daaret’s not to be sneezed at, I tell you. She does all she’s asked to do. And much, much more! And pretty enough--she’s not much uglier than other folk.”

“Well, one thing’s sure: if you do that, we shall clear out!”

“Hm-hm-hm! No, no, no!”

He tried to coax her like a child, he was so queer she almost had to laugh. She tossed her head and left him.

She was snorting, Jens could hear; she puffed him out like a bad smell. Oh, it was a sad shame Per wasn’t a real man, then he could have paid her out, that would have been a sight to see! For she was a jewel of a woman!

Valborg felt as if she must go round to every one of them and ask: Were they crazy already, or were they going that way?--Was Juvik nothing to them? Wasn’t there a single one the farm could depend on but herself?

She said it to Per that night after they had gone to bed, for she couldn’t sleep a wink: “It’s the maddest thing I ever heard. To turn your back on your forefathers’ farm and leave it for cattle to stray over--has anyone ever done the like? Run away and never care a straw!”

Per made no answer, and she grasped at the strongest weapon she had:

“What do you think your father would have said to such goings-on, if he’d been alive? Have you thought about that, Per?”

She was just falling off to sleep, when Per started up in bed.

“The Black Rock!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, kiss the cat!”

She turned her back to him, and he lay down again and shammed sleep.

A grown-up man who lay in bed and didn’t go to sleep, that was the most aggravating thing she knew of.

Now he sat up again, muttering to himself:

“There isn’t a dog anywhere about, is there?”

“Who cares if there is!” Soon after she added, and now her voice was gentler: “It’s a sheep above in the field, can’t you hear that?”

2

In the dog-days it all floats up again, what the sea has taken. And then Morten Aune came up too. They found him on the beach south of the Black Rock, two young lads who had rowed out after coal-fish one night. There he lay among the seaweed, a dead man, a sea corpse; they knew him by his clothes, for he had on a blue jacket and a red woollen scarf round his neck; it made them sick and they got away quickly. They went to Juvik and told the womenfolk, and they told the men.--They heard all sorts of foolish tales, said Jens. Per said nothing.

After supper Jens rowed out after coal-fish; he did that now and then. Valborg kept an eye on Per. Just so, about midnight he stole out and was gone. Pleasant journey! she thought.--They came back together, towards morning. “Now perhaps we’ll get some peace,” she said to herself.

Next day folk were out searching, they went all along the shore to the southward, but saw nothing unusual. The lads must have been talking nonsense, they had given themselves a scare over nothing. Morten had been sucked down into the bog right enough.

That day Per rowed across the fiord to Haaberg; he wanted a talk with Ane.

At Haaberg things took their usual course, and it was a crooked one. The farm was big, but the work done on it was small; it looked as if everything on the place was waiting for death. And the family had pretty nearly died out too, they were old and childless, the few that were left, so Ane was allowed to stay there in peace.

Per had a look round before he went in. There stood the houses, he couldn’t help laughing at them, they were so ruinous; and the yard between was a sea of mud. And there you had the fields: sour, sour; rocks and swampy ground everywhere, bramble-bushes and fallow land and all kinds of barrenness. But such a boundless expanse, forest and meadow, timber to your heart’s content; and good soil, no doubt, if the truth were told.

He took another turn, walking with a furrow between his brows; presently he brightened up and the deep blue look came into his eyes which the Juvikings always had when they were bent on anything.

“Oh ay,” he kept saying. “Oh ay; with God’s help and willing hands it’ll do. And timber too, and grazing”--he stood on the Knoll and looked round--“there’s a good living to be made here. And handy for the water. And peat, peat as far as you can see. And new land to clear, enough to keep you busy for a lifetime. Lord save us, what a huge place!”

Ane was not up to much. She made you think of a sick tree on a sour piece of ground. It was all sighing and sorrowing, everything was against her, farm and folk and all she set eyes on. She was getting old too--old, but not ugly.

Why didn’t she marry again, he asked. She turned red at this, gave a start almost, but it was strange how much younger it made her.--Ah, should she that? She, an old widow, what was he thinking of?

Ho! when she had farm and land, and cash besides; she mustn’t be so hard on herself!

Farm? No, child, the farm only frightened them away, kept folk from the house, that was what it did. For folk hadn’t much sense, she could tell him.

No-o, there was some truth in that. But what about a widower? With a neat little farm of his own?--there were plenty like that.

Heh! she said--he was talking nonsense, but it was a treat to listen to it, she couldn’t help smiling. She set about bringing him something to eat.

“Now look here, Ane, listen to me: what if I bought the farm of you, eh?” He said it as he sat at table. At this she only pulled a long face and looked foolish. No, really, he was telling her the truth--this and nothing else was what brought him here today. For Juvik was no place for two, and they couldn’t cut it up between them? What? No, not likely, but--

He talked her round and round, he was so lively and confident, she had never heard Per like this, or anyone else, for a long time. He talked of the family and he talked of his own concerns, till she could see nothing for it but to let him have the farm. He was quite frank: he told her about Jens and Daaret, and about Valborg, the price he had thought of paying and all, and before she knew where she was, he plunged into her affairs, showed her how the place was going to ruin, and she getting on in years; what she ought to do was to sell now and get a bit of money put by, and it was no trifle he offered her--four hundred dollars down! And leave him to talk to her husband’s relations, he’d tackle them, he said, let them go to law and all the rest, if they had a mind to it.

Tackle them!--that was a word that took her fancy. They’d have to mind themselves with Per.

“Yes, or maybe I should treat them friendly? Then maybe you’d move out to Paalsness, to Andrias?”

She went red and hot at this, for Per must have seen into her thoughts. This Andrias was a widower and a warm man, with grown-up children and a nice little farm and money besides; and then he was her husband’s next heir.

“Then he’ll get the money for Haaberg, so what will the others have to say? For there’s not much life left in them; and then they’ll have won, and you’ll have won, and that will be the end and upshot,” said Per, and thanked her for his meal.

When he left, the thing was as good as settled. There was only the question whether Ane was to have a pension, they hadn’t discussed that; but there was no hurry about it, till they saw what would be needed.

It was a bright and boisterous day, sun and shadow raced each other over the land, over crag and bog and soft green forest; farms with their little grey houses showed up, smiling; now and again the Juvik shore came rowing towards one with its grassy slopes and fir-clad heights along the water’s edge.

Per came home to Valborg with a bright look on his face, came and talked to her like a master, as in old days, told her what he had done. She was rather slow to take him up, he thought; it was not so easy to bring her round.

“No,” he said, “I dare say it was too bad of me--not to tell you about it before I went.”

Oh, that! No, that had never occurred to her--stuff and nonsense! But he saw that she blinked her eyes rather painfully as she turned away; she stood before him like a little girl. She looked about at all the things around her, as though they could give her back her strength. Then she turned to him, just like one in distress:

“Is Juvik nothing but an old coat to you, Per?” And hastily she added: “Ay, to me, you know, it won’t make much difference--but what if your father had been alive?”

She left him at once; was on her way to the storehouse for meal and couldn’t stop, the pot was just on the boil, she said.

Well, that was all right, as long as it didn’t boil _over_. Per stood watching Valborg and forgot to take his eyes off her.--But he who has taken the Ugly Man on his back must carry him over the stream, he muttered. And now he had to go and look for Jens.

Jens was down at Skare, a croft by the shore, on the north side, only a step away. The folk of Skare were reckoned as only middling; Per didn’t think much of them, a lazy, beggarly, foul-mouthed crew; but there Jens was, and not for the first time.

Per strolled down towards the sea. He thought he had never seen so fine a summer evening, valleys and bogs pale blue with dew, and the meadows all in bloom, the long grass reached almost to his knees; now the evening shadows fell upon the slopes, upon sorrel and buttercups and white daisies, upon good and evil; there is such companionship in grass, whether it is growing in the meadow or lying in the hay-cart, Per had a feeling for it.--They were well off for fodder here at Juvik, and the corn didn’t look badly either this year; presently the barley would be in ear, and then it was time to cut the hay; that was a good rule.

Oh ay, said Per, that was so. One was a free being, one went where one could. He looked at the eastern sky, it was so grand over the mountain ridge yonder, great golden-white clouds lay there shining at you, and the gulls were calling over the fiord. The mountains, they stand where they are, they know where they belong. But the clouds don’t do that, they’re always on the move, they go where they please and vary as the mood takes them.

But what had become of Jens! Wasn’t he coming home to supper like other folk?

At last he came, and Per stepped aside into the field to take a look at the crop.

“Well, Jens, now I’ve gone and bought myself a farm. Can you guess which?”

Jens could not, but he was all impatience, wanted to know at once. Haaberg? That’s it.--“Ah. But you know: _I_ should have been the one to do it. For I’m more of a rover and a flit-about; and I shan’t have anything tip-top in the way of a wife either, as far as I can see. So it was silly of you.”

But he was the elder, said Per.

Jens never liked to hear that.--“Yes, I hear you say so,” he said. “But now it’s Valborg that’s boss, she’s such a stiff neck; ay, you know, she’s a golden apple in your hand against Daaret; for Daaret, poor soul, she’s not much more than a dolt and a dullard before the Lord.”

“Be quiet with you! You don’t mean to cry down your own wife, do you?” Per’s face was all awry.

“As to that, I do as I please.”

“Do you think they did so--our grandfather and--other decent folk?”

“Now you’re at it again!--No, _they_ didn’t, they lived in the old days; the days when men increased and multiplied _on the earth_, as you know.” He turned round to Per and laughed quietly and good-humouredly: So then he had to flit because Juvik was too small, eh? Oh no, my boy, then it would have been for another to flit. “Bide a wee, I’ll tell you what it is: it’s your Black Rock friend that’s scared you away. If I’d looked after myself properly, I could have had bogies for you all over the place. But I--almost thought we might both have got along here.”

Per walked in silence for a while, considering with himself. Then he thought he had better say how it was:

“You may well say I’m scared. For I am. We killed him. But it isn’t only that, Jens. I _must_ get away. It seems as if they _want_ me out of here and across the fiord.”

“Who do?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I can feel that’s what they want.”

He hadn’t said the half of it. He had it all so clear, but it slipped away when he tried to come out with it. But he didn’t care if they did think he was frightened. He had a firm foothold, it seemed to him: he was going to do what no Juviking had done before him. It had grown up within him so quietly, all the time he had been weak and downhearted. They _talked_ to him.

“Who knows?” sneered Jens; “we might be leaving here the same day, you and I, Per.”

3

Per took it as a joke, and thought no more of it. Perhaps Jens did not mean much by it either, but his words were soon to come true.

At present there was the haymaking, and it went slowly; there was no drying it this year, nothing but rain and rot; and yet they might thank their stars, for worse times were predicted, there was talk of war and famine, the sky was full of evil omens. The Juvik men made light of this and went ahead with the hay as well as they could; and at last they had it carted, such as it was.

“You’re not in such an almighty hurry to move, are you?” asked Jens one day, when they had just eaten their haymaking porridge.--“Oh, it’s best to make a start with it, a bit at a time. That’s what Ane wants.”--“There’s this wedding business, you see.” Jens tried to make a joke of it, but didn’t succeed very well. “It might be more--pleasant if you two stayed here for that.”--“Well, then let it be soon,” said Per. For it was so queer to see Jens at a loss like this.--“There’s nothing else for it. A man looks a fool with a bride in the straw, you know that saying?”

Per left him silently. There dawned on him a thing he had never thought of before: that Jens _was_ like this, and he couldn’t be different; he was scarcely happier than other folk.

So there was a wedding at Juvik, with dancing and jollity, and they got it over in three or four days. Per could not put off his flitting any longer; and it looked as if the young people thought more of the meals than the dancing; they were getting sadly unused to a good feed. They were feeling the pinch in the farms around.

Then came the flitting. It was no very long job, for they hadn’t much gear to take with them. They were to leave behind what belonged to Juvik and take over Haaberg with what was in it. The farm at home had been left to the boys as it stood, while the girls got the cash and a cow each from the byre; now Jens paid out his brother with two hundred silver dollars, and the half of that Per had to borrow east in Engdal; he wanted the money to pay for Haaberg, and Jens thought Per could get it easier than he.

“Seems to me it’s going to bring us all to beggary, this here,” said Jens. He said it so that Valborg might hear, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that she took it to heart; her face grew hard, a sort of blight came over this jewel of Per’s, it did one good to see it. But Per held up his head and smiled down on him: that was how Jens was made and he’d never be different; as bad as a draughty door, poor man, but a right good fellow all the same; many a merry day they’d had together.

They had fine weather for the flitting, dead calm and sunshine; Jens rowed across with them. There was no real leave-taking, with Juvik and the folk there, for they had one thing and another to come back for; Per was to fetch the colt he had bought one day, and Valborg found she had forgotten her spinning-wheels and weaver’s reeds and other little things.

But Valborg looked back furtively. She ought not to have done that, it was not a good sign exactly, but as she sat in the boat, there was nowhere else for her eyes.

Juvik turned away from her and was gone.

“Now we can’t see our home any more,” said Anders; he too was gazing backward, and he was very long in the face.

“Yes, but it’s fun to be taken out for a row, isn’t it?” said Valborg.

There happened to be other signs that did not augur well. Valborg saw them and Per saw them, but nobody heeded such things nowadays, that time was past and gone.

“Thanks for your help,” said Per to Jens.

“Put it on the stone there. So you’ll come across for the colt before the holidays?”

“Ay, what day is today?”

“Today’s _Wednesday_, and tomorrow will be _Thursday_”--Jens pushed off the boat and jumped into it. “Ah, I was forgetting”--and he spat out a curse, which he had been told was not a bad thing to do.

Per was across the fiord a couple of times, but only on a flying visit; Valborg was not with him, he looked after her things for her.

And then there was not much time to think of that any more. At Haaberg a thousand things awaited them. First Per had to get on to the roof, for it was letting in water in streams; then to saw planks and lay the stable floor, and at odd times, when he was resting, as he called it, there was stone to be quarried on the Knoll for paving the farm-yard, if they were not to be swallowed up alive. Valborg took to washing, and that was cheerful work, for here you could see something for it.

Per’s eyes dwelt on the wet and stony ground whenever he straightened himself, and they grew sharp and full of fight: he’d make a farm of it in time!--Valborg put her hands on her hips, and her head on one side: if they had a proper floor, and a kitchen over there, partitioned off, and another window, and a stove--

Now and again she would watch Per, and then dimples came in her cheeks: “I believe it’s made a new man of him!”

He took no notice of Valborg, otherwise he must have said the same of her.

Ane was always in and out. She was to have a pension, a thumping big one, and the outer room, as they called it, was to be got ready for her when there was time. She was a little peevish and inclined to make trouble, but Per put a queer life into her when he discoursed about marriage.

He actually found a pretext for going east to Paalsness, more than once. He had to borrow money, it seemed, and that was the place to get it. And one day Andrias came to Haaberg. Per was the one he asked for, but Ane was the one he found, and with Ane he had a talk. He was a lively old fellow, looked as if he’d like to dance, thought Ane, and young too, she thought. Ane didn’t look bad either, when she chose.--By the time Andrias found Per he was able to tell him that they had made it up between them, he and she; they were going to row in the same boat, and as to which of them was to sit aft, they’d have to fight that out when they were by themselves. “I only hope we’re not going to have a Thirty Years’ War over it,” said he.

It took its time, but before Christmas Ane moved east, and they made a proper wedding of it.

Jens Juvika got drunk, but that didn’t matter so much, for he did a worse thing: he started singing for them, one song after another; and the worst was, he had made them up himself! “I don’t get merry oftener than other folk,” he said, “but when I do, I _sing!_” He had a good voice, and his songs went to such fine tunes; no matter how scandalized they were, they had to listen to him. For the worst of it was, he was not brim-full either.

In the course of the night he came blathering up to Per, among all the crowd, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said this was the last time he’d make him feel hot, the last time they two would roast each other like friends and brothers. And now Per was to drink when he asked him, for old brotherhood’s sake-- “Drink, do you hear, you puppy, what are you listening for now? Are you afraid, are you _frightened_, brother of mine?”

Per felt what was coming and asked him out, then they’d have a thimbleful by themselves.--Jens was softened at this and came, but it splashed out of him on the way: “We two--we’re not afraid of the dark, are we? The Black Rock’s black, but we’re blacker; do you remember last spring, Per, how we ran, like two frisky calves, and he in front of us?--Devil smite me, how he legged it, ha ha ha!”

Per got him round the corner and into the storehouse for fresh beer. But there his boldness left him; he took a swig or two and stared doubtfully at Per; his face was pale and drawn.

“What are you growling about? Isn’t my old woman as good as yours? Even if father didn’t pick her for me? Short in the wits, you say--pooh!” He looked down, thought for a bit before he got what he wanted; then he muttered to himself: “Did I dream it, or did somebody tell me?--that the thing to back you at a pinch is the wit you haven’t got and don’t miss. _You_ have wit enough to be sure, he he.” He raised his head again: “Well, it’s all one to me, as the girl said.--God save us, how disgusting you are, Per! A man of honour! Will it be long before the baby’s born, you ask? I stand up just as straight, no matter where I lie. No matter when it’s born. But the Black Rock, heh?”

Per left him.

4

Jens was kind to the servants, and to his wife too. All the same, the other maid gave notice when Daaret became the mistress; she was not going to serve under _her_. And they could get nobody to take her place. Aasel had to go and find them maids. Jens wouldn’t settle down to anything--there was nothing more to be done at Juvik, he said, and so he took his gun and went off to the woods, stayed away till nightfall day after day. All night long he would sit down at Skare playing cards for money, or he might go farther than that. If he got drunk, he sang, one song worse than the other; they soon knew them all over the parish.

Just before Christmas--it was Thomas-mass Day--he had a daughter.

“Amen!” said Jens, when they told him.--A pretty little lass, they said.--“Amen!”--Would he like to see her? he could come now.--“No, no, what’s the use of that?” He turned sharp round to the woman they had fetched in: “I suppose she’s as like her father as two peas, what?”

The woman didn’t like this and turned away. “Maybe it’s too soon to see that,” she said.

Jens had been in to breakfast, and now he was going out again. But first he was at the woman again: “What are you reckoning up, eh? January, February, March, you say. Ay, you’re right there, you’re a whole heap right. The youngster’s a wee bit old already, eleven months and all of that. But what of it? It’s nothing to me.” He looked up at the ceiling with a sneer, and then he went out. To Daaret he said not a word.

And they all began to wonder: either the child was eleven months old when it came into the world, or they didn’t know anything at all. But then she had fooled others besides Jens. And why was Jens always down at Skare of late?

That evening, as every other evening, Jens was at Skare. All at once, as they sat at cards, he grabbed the fist of Haagen, the elder of the boys, covered it with his big palm, squeezed it too, maybe, as hard as he could, for the lad clenched his teeth and turned pale; Jens looked at him, as mild as milk: “Come up home with me, Haagen, we’ll take a look at my little lassie. She’s only a poor wee girlie, but she’s a proper shape, and eleven months old. What? And so like me she is!” He had half risen. Then he sat down again and went on with the game. They were both on the alert, he could see, either to make for the door or to whip out their knives, if it came to a tussle.--“Ay,” he said, looking round at them: “I might have had a mind to prune you a bit; but where’s the profit?--do you think I’m a lousy cottar just because I sit here in your company?”

They played on till black night, and Jens stumbled home in the dark. He stood for a moment outside the old house, looked at the Pleiads, and considered: “Maybe I should light a fire and turn in here? Then the lousy cottar body could have the house to herself.” But he only shrugged his shoulders, went up into the loft, and found a bed there....

At Christmas-time folk did not go visiting. They just went to church, and the rest of the time they stayed at home and kept the feast. That custom was broken by none but Jens. He went straight from church to Haaberg, on Christmas Day itself, and there he stayed. Per and Valborg were a little taken aback when they saw him, but that only tickled Jens. He saw too how it galled Valborg that Daaret had fooled her. He kept telling them again that he’d got a daughter, and that it was on Thomas-mass Day she was born. She couldn’t make up her mind to come sooner, he said.

The next day they went east to Paalsness, both Per and Jens, and to other places after that; they enjoyed themselves up to the eyes.

At last one morning Jens was homeward bound, and Per went down with him to the shore. They were both rather the worse for wear.

As Jens stood in the boat, poling her out of the shoal water, he said:

“I’m for Lofoten this winter. So it’s good-bye to you, Per.”

Their eyes met, and Per turned pale.

“Eh, but--you’ve not gone daft, Jens?”

“Oh ay. That I have. I want to get away and shake myself, can’t you guess that, you ass?”

He took his oars, turned the boat’s head round, but did not begin to row.--“Good luck to you, Per, as long as you live! Anyway I’m glad there’s as much man in me as there is. That I’m not a milksop like you. I eat my porridge even if it is weevily, that’s how I am. And isn’t it a queer thing how I can stick my hands in my pockets, to keep them from getting into mischief?” The boat had drifted in among the stones again, and now he had to row.

“Well, Per, thanks for all.”

The strokes of his oars grated and groaned across the water, farther and farther away; it was like the voice of an angry man.

Per said nothing about this to Valborg.

And Jens did not tell his wife where he was going, until he was as good as gone. He had shipped aboard of a foreigner who came in to buy wood, and he got ready in all haste; he was to be nothing better than a hired seaman, as he had no Lofoten outfit. Daaret didn’t dare to raise her eyes; she looked as if she had never expected anything else.

And then he had bargained with Haagen from Skare to come here and take charge of the place for the winter; what did she say to that?

The poor creature bent down to the floor after something, fumbled about, and didn’t find it. “That’ll be all right,” she said.

Jens stayed awhile longer; he tried to stand in the middle of the room as if nothing concerned him, the way Per used to do. He worked his forehead up and down like an angry bear.--“That’s it, then,” was all he said. She’d have to look after Haagen properly and not forget he was as hungry as a wolf, that fellow. And, by the way, if anything went wrong she was to send for Aasel, for she was always the safest to turn to.

So _that_ was over, thank God, and glad they were, both of them. He was already outside, when he came in once more, and nearly scared the wits out of her; she got behind the cradle and stood there; but he wanted nothing worse than to say good-bye and take her by the hand. Daaret couldn’t make it out at all.

5

The winter went by, but it went with a heavy gait; a bad and stormy winter.

Its hand was heavy enough on Juvik, when the easterly gales set in; ’twas no treat for those who had to be out, they used to say.

At Haaberg it was much worse. There the wind came from every quarter, so searching and persistent, and so sharp of tooth; it devoured you, they said. Per declared it blew clean through him, no matter where he stood; it was an enemy that was trying to drive him out.

It was a blessing, though, that he had so much to do, and Valborg watched him and felt easier than she had done for a long time; to be sure, he would still stand wool-gathering now and again somewhere about the place, but never for long at a time; and he wasn’t too much afraid of the dark either, as far as she could see, not enough to hurt him. He was the man she had taken him for.

At last the spring came, this year too. What’s more, it came early to Haaberg, from the way the farm lay. The Knoll came out first, raising a grey, rocky face and looking up into the sky, then they came one after another, grey old fellows, stood and sunned themselves, without a thought or a threat in them; and the fields came after, bit by bit, in rags and tatters of a dirty grey; and now the bog was bare, its whole brown and barren face was clear, the birds flew over it and sang. The grey rock pushed away his mantle of mould, wanted to see where he was. The scent of growth caught at one’s nostrils, tingled through body and soul.--The air was full of the haze of springtime, and all that one saw was blue with it.

Everything cast its skin, that had a skin to cast.

Per and Valborg sometimes went out in the evening and stood chatting about one thing or another, listening and looking about them. Sometimes Per was alone. Then one heard more. Then a voice of the night came whispering up from the sea, asking its endless question of the shore; it was the murmur of the surf. And the answer came from the land above, the spring night answered with a single voice: the roar of the torrent within the forest.

And the spring advanced, over Haaberg and the whole neighbourhood. The waters of spring leapt and gurgled and laughed, the wind whistled in tearing gusts. Per ploughed and sowed, at sunrise he was in the fields, at midday and till late in the evening; the Haaberg land had never been put to it like this before; he thought it turned and stared at him like a chewing cow, giving a little friendly grunt now and again. The big stones might rest for another year, and the wet patches could wait awhile; but he was getting ready and he had his eye on them.

At Juvik it was not so well. Jens did not come home. His boat’s crew sent word that he had gone farther north with a trader and they were to give his kindest greetings. They were altogether in a bad way at Juvik, and Per had to go over and put things straight.

But by that time Aasel was already there.--“Well, now you’ll have to take over the farm,” he said to her.--She?--“Just so, ay.”--But what about him?--“No. We don’t shift about like that. And you,” he turned to Daaret, “you’ll have to have a little pension, a cow and a little corn and whatever it may be; enough to keep you alive.”--“Pension?”--“Ay, pension, I said. For you’re not going to idle about here with that crofter fellow of yours from Skare, that didn’t come to anything, you see. Your little girl we say nothing about--that’s plain enough, isn’t it?”--“Ay, ay,” said Daaret, and then she went to pieces, turned pale and blue at the same time; she couldn’t meet his eyes.

Nor was there any standing up to Per that day. If it had been the King himself, he’d have got out of Per’s way, they were thinking.

“The best way will be for you to move in here at once,” he took Aasel aside again. “Your Mikkal is more of a seal than anything, but you shall have the farm for all that. Remember, that was how father wished it, he must have seen how it would be. The price and that--we’ll talk about another time. Her there--we _won’t_ talk about.”

Once again he came and took Aasel aside. He was so full of it all, she hardly knew him.--“I, do you say? No. I’m where I ought to be. For I had to get away. They wished it so. And, besides, one must move about a bit. Ay, and then there was Valborg. She was only vexing herself here and getting cross and ugly. She didn’t want to leave here, no, but she had to! So that’s all done with. And now you’re the one who has the say at Juvik. You must be _at_ yourself, Aasel!”

And so it was. Daaret was given the old house to live in, and enough to keep her, and Mikkal and Aasel took over the farm.

Per and Valborg were across to see them one Sunday. Aasel showed big dimples in her cheeks, such as the Juvik women often had when they were pleased with themselves. Mikkal looked from one to the other, inquisitive and serious, and asked Per’s advice about many things. Their children were all over the place, a whole herd of youngsters crawling and running about and making a noise: it was such grand fun here. And Per nodded: this was as it should be, Juvik wished it so.--“Now we must see about getting _home_,” said Valborg; there were so many things waiting for them there.

“The question is,” said Per as they rowed homewards, “whether it isn’t so that the old places cast their skin now and again. They used to think that, the old fellows.”