A man came out for his bricklayer’s tools; he wanted them back. What? Then Grindhusen had not stolen them at all! But it was always the same with Grindhusen: commonplace, dull, and ordinary, never great in anything, never a lofty mind.

I said:

“You, Grindhusen, there’s nothing in you but eat and sleep and work. Here’s a man come for those tools now. So you only borrowed them; that’s all you’re good for. I wouldn’t be you for anything.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Grindhusen.

He was offended now, but I got him round again, as I had done so many times before, by pretending I had only spoken in jest.

“What are we to do now?” he asked.

“You’ll manage it all right,” said I.

“Manage it — will I?”

“Yes, or I am much mistaken.”

And Grindhusen was pacified once more.

But at the midday rest, when I was cutting his hair, I put him out of temper once again by suggesting he should wash his head.

“A man of your age ought to know better than to talk such stuff,” he said.

And Heaven knows but he may have been right. His red thatch of hair was thick as ever, for all he’d grandchildren of his own. . . .

Now what was coming to that barn of ours? Were spirits about? Who had been in there one day suddenly and cleaned the place and made all comfortable and neat? Grindhusen and I had each our own bedplace; I had bought a couple of rugs, but he turned in every night fully dressed, with all he stood up in, and curled himself up in the hay all anyhow. And now here were my two rugs laid neatly, looking for all the world like a bed. I’d nothing against it; ’twas one of the maids, no doubt, setting to teach me neat and orderly ways. ’Twas all one to me.

I was ready now to start cutting through the floor upstairs, but Fruen begged me to leave it to next day; her husband would be going over to the annexe, and that way I shouldn’t disturb him. But next morning we had to put it off again; Fr?ken Elisabeth was going in to the store to buy no end of things, and I was to go with her and carry them.

“Good,” said I, “I&rsq............