The Captain has done as he said about the timber; there’s a cracking and crashing in the woods already. And a mild autumn, too, with no frost in the ground as yet to stop the ploughing; Nils grasps at the time like a miser, to save as much as possible next spring.

Now comes the question whether Grindhusen and I are to work on the timber. It crosses my mind that I had intended really to go off for a tramp up in the hills and over the moors while the berries were there; what about that journey now? And another thing, Grindhusen was no longer worth his keep as a wood-cutter; he could hold one end of a saw, but that was about all he was good for now.

No, for Grindhusen was changed somehow; devil knows how it had come about. He had not grown bald at all; his hair was there, and thick and red as ever. But he had picked up a deal at ?vreb?, and went about bursting with health and good feeding; well off here? He had sent good sums of money home to his family all that summer and autumn, and was full of praise for Captain and Freun, who paid such good wages and treated their folk so well. Not like the Inspector, that weighed and counted every miserable Skilling, and then, as true as God’s in heaven, go and take off two Kroner that he’d given as clear as could be . . . ugh! He, Grindhusen, was not the man to make a fuss about a wretched two Kroner, as long as it was a matter of any sense or reason, but to go and take it off like that — fy Fan! Would you ever find the Captain doing such a thing?

But Grindhusen was grown so cautious now, and wouldn’t even get properly angry with any one. Even yet, perhaps, he might go back and work for the Inspector on the river at two Kroner a day, and humbly agree with all his master said. Age, time, had overtaken him.

It overtakes us all.

Said the Captain:

“That water-supply you spoke about — is it too late to do anything with it this year?”

“Yes,” I answered.

The Captain nodded and walked away.

I ploughed one day more, then the Captain came to me again. He was out and about everywhere these days, working hard, keeping an eye on everything. He gave himself barely time for a proper meal, but was out again at once, in the fields, the barn, the cattle-sheds, or up in the woods where the men were at work.

“You’d better get to work on that water-supply,” he said. “The ground’s workable still, and may stay so for a long time yet. What help will you want?”

“Grindhusen can help,” I said. “But. . . . ”

“Yes, and Lars. What were you going to say?”

“The frost may set in any day now.”

“Well, and then it may snow and soften the ground again. We’re not frost-bound here every year,” said the Captain. “You’d better take a few extra hands, and set some of them to digging, the rest to the masonry work. You’ve done all this before, I think you said?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ve spoken to Nils myself,” he said, with a smile. “So you’ll have no trouble in that way. You can put the horses in now.”

So bravely cheerful he was, I could not help feeling the same, and wanted to begin at once; I hurried back with the horses, almost at a run. The Captain seemed quite eager about this water-supply, now that the place looked so nice with its new paint, and after the fine harvest we’d had. And now he was cutting a thousand dozen battens in the woods, to pay off his debts and leave something over!

So I went off up the rising ground, and found the old place I had marked down long before for the reservoir, took the depth down to the house, pacing and measuring this way and that. There was a streamlet came down from the hillside far above, with such a depth and fall that it never froze in winter; the thing would be to build a small stone reservoir here, with openings at the sides for the overflow in autumn and spring. Oh, but they should have their water-supply at ?vreb?! As for the masonry work, we could break out our stone on the site itself; there was layer on layer of granite there.

By noon next day we were hard at work, Lars Falkenberg digging the trench for the pipe-line, Grindhusen and I getting stone. We were both well used to this work from the days when we had been road-making together at Skreia.

Well and good.

We worked four days; then it was Sunday. I remember that Sunday, the sky clear and far, the leaves all fallen in the woods, and the hillside showing only its calm winter green; smoke rose from the chimney up in the clearing. Lars had borrowed a horse and cart that afternoon to drive in to the station; he had killed a pig and was sending it in to town. He was to fetch letters for the Captain on the way back.

It occurred to me that this evening would be a good time to send the lad up to the clearing for my washing: Lars was away, and no one could take offence at that washing business now.

Oh yes, I said to myself, you’re very careful to do what’s right and proper, sending the lad up to fetch that washing. But you’ll find it isn’t that at all. Right and proper, indeed; you’re getting old, that’s what it is.

I bore with this reproach for an hour. Then — well, it was all nonsense, like as not, and here was a lovely evening, and Sunday into the bargain, nothing to do, no one to talk to down here. . . . Getting old, was I? Afraid of the walk uphill?

And I went up myself.

Early next morning Lars Falkenberg came over again. He drew me aside, as he had done once before, and with the same intent: I had been up to the clearing yesterday, it seemed; it was to be the last time, and would I please to make no mistake about that!

“It was the last of my washing, anyhow,” I said.

“Oh, you and your washing! As if I couldn’t have brought along your miserable shirt a hundred times since you’ve been here!”

Now, by what sort of magic had he got to know of my little walk up there already? Ragnhild, of course, at her old tricks again — it could be no one else. There was no doing anything with that girl.

But now, as it happened, Nils was at hand this time, as he had been the time before. He came strolling over innocently from the kitchen, and in a moment Lars’s anger was turned upon him instead.

“Here’s the other scarecrow coming up, too,” says Lars, “and he’s a long sight worse than you.”

“What’s that you say?” said Nils.

“What’s that you say!” retorted Lars. “You go home and rinse your mouth with a mixture or something, and see if you can talk plain,” said he.

Nils stopped short at this, and came up to see what it was all about.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said he.

“No, of course not. You don’t know anything that’s any sense. But you know all about ploughing in standing crops, don’t you? There’s not many can beat you at that.”

But here Nils grew angry for once, and his cheeks paled.

“What an utter fool you are, Lars! Can’t you keep your mouth shut with that nonsense?”

“Fool, eh? Hark at the silly goat!” said Lars, turning to me. “Thinks himself mighty fine, doesn’t he? ‘Utter’” he says — and goes white about it. “I’ve been more years than you at ?vreb?, and asked in to sing up at the house of an evening more than once, let me tell you. But things have changed since then, and what have we got instead? You remember,” he said, turning to me, “what it was like in the old days. It was Lars here and Lars there, and I never heard but the work got done all right. And after me it was Albert, that was here for eighteen months. But then you, Nils, came along, and now it’s toil and moil and ploughing and carting manure day and night, till a man’s worn to a thread with it all.”

Nils and I could not help laughing at this. And Lars was in no way offended; he seemed quite pleased at having said something funny, and, forgetting his ill-will, joined in the laugh himself.

“Yes, I say it straight out,” said he. “And if it wasn’t for you being a friendly sort between whiles — no, friendly I won’t say, but someways decent and to get on with after a fashion . . . if it wasn’t for that. . . . ”

“Well, what then?”

Lars was getting more and more good humoured. “Oh,” he said, with a laugh, “I could just pick you up and stuff you down in your own long boots.”

“Like to feel my arm?” said Nils.

“What’s going on here?” asked the Captain, coming up. It was only six o’clock, but he was out and about already.

“Nothing,” said Lars and Nils as well.

“How’s the reservoir getting on?” asked the Captain. This was to me, but before I could answer he turned to Nils. “I shall want the boy to drive me to the station,” he said. “I’m going to Christiania.”

Grindhusen and I went off to our work on the reservoir, and Lars to his digging. But a shadow seemed to have fallen over us all.

Grindhusen himself said openly: “Pity the Captain’s going away.”

I thought so, too. But he was obliged to go in on business, no doubt. There were the crops as well as the timber to be sold. But why should he start at that hour of the day? He couldn’t catch the early train in any case. Had there been trouble again? Was he anxious to be out of the way before Fruen got up?

Trouble there was, often enough.

It had gone so far by this time that the Captain and Fruen hardly spoke to one another, and whenever they did exchange a word it was in a careless tone, and looking all the other way. Now and again the Captain would look his wife properly in the face, and say she ought to be out more in the lovely air; and once when she was outside he asked if she wouldn’t come in and play a little. But this, perhaps, was only to keep up appearances, no more.

It was pitiful to see.

Fruen was quiet and nice. Now and again she would stand outside on the steps looking out towards the hills; so soft her features were, and her reddish yellow hair. But it w............