No, I didn’t go away.

I worked on, tramped through the weariest days of my life to their end, and finished laying the pipes. It was a bit of a change for us all on the place the first time we could draw water from a tap, and we were none the worse for something new to talk about for a while.

Lars Falkenberg had left us. He and I had got rid of all disagreement between us at the last, and were as we had been in the old days when we were mates and tramped the roads together.

He was better off than many another, was Lars; light of heart and empty of head; and thereto unconscionably sound and strong. True, there would be no more singing up at the house for him now or ever after, but he seemed to have grown a trifle doubtful of his voice himself the last few years, and contented himself now for the most part with the things he had sung — once upon a time — at dances and gentlefolk’s parties. No, Lars Falkenberg was none so badly off. He’d his own little holding, with keep for two cows and a pig; and a wife and children he had as well.

But what were Grindhusen and I to turn our hands to now? I could go off wandering anywhere, but Grindhusen, good soul, was no wanderer. All he could do was to stay on at one place and work till he was dismissed. And when the stern decision came, he was so upset that he could not take it easily, but felt he was being specially hardly used. Then after a while he grew confident again, and full of a childlike trust — not in himself, but in Fate, in Providence — sat down resignedly, and said: “Ay, well, ’twill be all right, let’s hope, with God’s help.”

But he was happy enough. He settled down with marvellous ease at whatever place he came to, and could stay there till he died if it rested with himself. Home he need not go; the children were grown up now, and his wife never troubled him. No, this red-haired old sinner of former days — all he needed now was a place, and work.

“Where are you going after this?” he asked me.

“A long way, up in the hills, to Trovatn, to a forest.”

He did not believe me in the least, but he answered quickly and evasively:

“Ay, I dare say, yes.”

After we had finished the pipes, Nils sent Grindhusen and myself up cutting wood till the Captain returned. We cut up and stacked the top-ends the woodmen had left; neat and steady work it was.

“We’ll be turned off, both of us,” said Grindhusen. “When Captain comes, eh?”

“You might get work here for the winter,” I said. “A thousand dozen battens means a lot of small stuff left over that you could saw up for a reasonable wage.”

“Well, talk to the Captain about it,” he said.

And the hope of regular work for the winter made this man a contented soul. He could manage well enough. No, Grindhusen had nothing much to trouble about.

But then there was myself. And I felt but little worth or use to myself now, Heaven help me!

That Sunday I wandered restlessly about. I was waiting for the Captain; he was to be back today. To make sure of things as far as I could, I went for a long walk up along the stream that fed our reservoir. I wanted to have another look at the two little waters up the hillside —“the sources of the Nile.”

Coming down on the way back, I met Lars Falkenberg; he was going home. The full moon was just coming up, red and huge, and turned things light all round. A touch of snow and frost there was, too; it was easy breathing. Lars was in a friendly mood: he had been drinking Br?ndevin somewhere, and talked a great deal. But I was not altogether pleased at meeting him.

I had stood there long up on the wooded hillside, listening to the soughing of earth and sky, and there was nothing else to hear. Then there might come a faint little rustling, a curled and shrunken leaf rolling and rustling down over the frozen branches. It was like the sound of a little spring. Then the soughing of earth and sky again. A gentleness came over me; a mute was set on all my strings.

Lars Falkenberg wanted to know where I had been and where I was going. Reservoir? A senseless business that reservoir thing. As if people couldn’t carry water for themselves. The Captain went in too much for these new-fangled inventions and ploughing over standing crops and such-like; he’d find himself landed one day. A rich harvest, they said. Ho, yes, but they never troubled to think what it must cost, with machines for this and that, and a pack of men to every machine again. What mustn’t it have cost, now, for Grindhusen and me that summer! And then himself this autumn. In the old days it had been music and plenty at ?vreb?, and some of us had been asked into the parlour to sing. “I’ll say no more,” said Lars. “And now there’s hardly a sizeable stick of timber left in the woods.”

“A few years’ time and it’ll be as thick as ever.”

“A few years! A many years, you mean. No, it’s not enough to go about being Captain and commanding — brrrr! and there it is! And he’s not even spokesman for the neighbours now, and you never see folk coming up now to ask him what he’d say was best to do in this or that. . . . ”

“Did you see the Captain down below? Had he come back yet?” I broke in.

“He’s just come back. Looked like a skeleton, he did. What was I going to say? . . . When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“So soon?” Lars was all friendliness, and wishing me good luck now; he had not thought I should be going off at once.

“It’s all a chance if I see you again this time,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this much, now: you’d do well to stop frittering your life away any more, and never staying on a place for good. And I say as much here and now, so mark my words. I dare say I haven’t got on so grandly myself, but I don’t know many of our likes have done better, and anyway not you. I’ve a roof over my head at the least, and a wife and children, and two cows — one bears autumn and one spring — and then a pig, and that’s all I can say I own. So better not boast about that. But if you reckon it up, it amounts to a bit of a holding after all.”

“It’s all very well for you, the way you’ve got on,” said I.

Lars is friendlier than ever after this appreciation; he wishes me no end of good, and goes on:

“There’s none could get on better than yourself, for that matter. With the knack you’ve got for all kinds of work, and writing and figuring into the bargain. But it’s your own fault. You might have done as I told you these six, seven years ago, and taken one of the other girls on the place, like I did with Emma, and settled down here for good. Then you wouldn’t be going about now from place to place. But I say the same again now.”

“It’s too late,” I answered.

“Ay, you’re terribly grey. I don’t know who you could reckon to get now about here. How old are you now?”

“Don’t ask me!”

“Not exactly a young one, perhaps, but still — What was I going to say? Come up with me a little, and maybe I’ll remember.”

I walked up, and Lars went on talking all the way. He offered to put in a word for me with the Captain, so I could get a clearing like he had.

“Funny to go and forget a thing like that,” he said. “It’s gone clean out of my head. But come up home now. I’ll be sure to hit on it again.”

All friendliness he was now. But I had one or two things to do myself, and would not go farther.

“You won’t see the Captain tonight, anyway.”

No, but it was late. Emma would be in bed, and would only be a trouble.

“Not a bit of it,” said Lars. “And if she has gone to bed, what of it? I shouldn’t wonder, now, if there was a shirt of yours up there, too. Better come up and take it with you, and save Emma going all the way down herself.”

But I would not go up. I ventured, however, to send a greeting to Emma this time.

“Ay, surely,” said Lars. “And if so be as you haven’t time to come up to my bit of a place now, why, there it is. You’ll be going off first thing tomorrow, I suppose?”

It slipped my mind for the moment that I should not be able to see the Captain that evening, and I answered now that I should be leaving as early as could be.

“Well, then, I’ll send Emma down with that shirt of yours at once,” said Lars. “And good luck to you. And don’t forget what I said.”

And that was farewell to Lars.

A little farther down I slackened my pace. After all, there was no real hurry about the few things I had to pack and finish off. I turned back and walked up again a little, whistling in the moonlight. It was a fine evening, not cold at all, only a soft, obedient calm all over the woods. Half an hour passed, and then to my surprise came Emma, bringing my shirt.

Next morning neither Grindhusen nor I went to the woods. Grindhusen was uneasy.

“Did you speak to the Captain about me?” he asked.

“I haven’t spoken to him.”

“Oh, I know he’ll turn me off now, you see! If he had any sense, he’d let me stay on to cut up all that cord-wood. But what’s he know about things? It’s as much as he can manage to keep a man at all.”

“Why, what’s this, Grindhusen? You seemed to like the Captain well enough before.”

“Oh yes, you know! Yes, of course. He’s good enough, I dare say. H’m! I wonder, now, if the Inspector down on the river mightn’t have some little scrap of a job in my line. He’s a man with plenty of money, is the Inspector.”

I saw the Captain at eight o’clock, and talked with him a while; then a couple of neighbours came to call — offering sympathy in his bereavement, no doubt. The Captain looked fatigued, but he was not a broken man by any means; his manner was firm and steady enough. He spoke to me a little about a plan he had in mind for a big drying-house for hay and corn.

No more of things awry now, ?vreb?, no more emotion, no soul gone off the rails. I thought of it almost with sadness. No one to stick up impertinent photographs on the piano, but no one to play on that piano, either; dumb now, it stands, since the last note sounded. No, for Fru Falkenberg is not here now; she can do no more hurt to herself or any other. Nothing of all that used to be here now. Remains, then, to be seen if all will be flowers and joy at ?vreb? hereafter.

“If only he doesn’t take to drinking again,” I said to Nils.

“No, surely,” he said. “And I don’t believe he ever did. It was just a bit of foolery, if you ask me, his going on like that just for the time. But talking of something else — will you be coming back here in the spring?”

“No,” I answered. “I shall not come again now.”

Then Nils and I took leave of each other. Well I remember that man’s calm and fairness of mind; I stood looking after him as he walked away across the yard. Then he turned round and said:

“Were you up in the woods yesterday? Is there snow enough for me to take a sledge up for wood?”

“Yes,” I answered.

And he went off, relieved, to the stables, to harness up.

Grindhusen, too, comes along, on the way to the stable. He stops for a moment to tell me that the Captain has himself offered him work cutting wood. “‘Saw up all the small stuff you can,’ he said; ‘keep at it for a while. I dare say we can agree all right about wages.’ ‘Honoured and thank you, Captain,’ says I. ‘Right! Go and tell Nils,’ he says. Oh, but he’s a grand open-handed sort, is the Captain! There’s not many of his like about.”

A little while after, I was sent for up to the Captain’s room. He thanked me for the work I had done both indoors, and out, and went on to settle up. And that was all, really. But he kept me there a little, asking one or two things about the drying-shed, and we talked over that for a bit. Anyhow it would have to wait till after Christmas, he said. But when the time came, he’d be glad to see me back. He looked me in the face then, and went on:

&l............