But Isak had changed his mind again; had put on his lordly manner again, and said he would manage by himself. "No call to bother with other folk," says he; "I can manage it alone."
"'Tis more than one man's work," says Inger. "You'll wear yourself out."
"Just help me to hoist these up," says Isak, and that was all.
October came, and Inger had to give up. This was a hard blow, for the roof-beams must be got up at any cost, and the place covered in before the autumn rains; there was not a day to be lost. What could be wrong with Inger? Not going to be ill? She would make cheese now and then from the goats' milk, but beyond that she did little save shifting Goldenhorns a dozen times a day where she grazed.
"Bring up a good-sized basket, or a box," she had said, "next time you're down to the village."
"What d'you want that for?" asked Isak.
"I'll just be wanting it," said Inger.
Isak hauled up the roof-beams on a rope, Inger guiding them with one hand; it seemed a help just to have her about. Bit by bit the work went on; there was no great height to the roof, but the timber was huge and heavy for a little house.
The weather kept fine, more or less. Inger got the potatoes in by herself, and Isak had the roofing done before the rain came on in earnest. The goats were brought in of a night into the hut and all slept there together; they managed somehow, they managed everyway, and did not grumble.
Isak was getting ready for another journey down to the village. Said
Inger very humbly:
"Do you think perhaps you could bring up a good-sized basket, or a box?"
"I've ordered some glass windows," said Isak. "and a couple of painted doors. I'll have to fetch them up," said he in his lordly way.
"Ay well, then. It's no great matter about the basket."
"What did you want with a basket? What's it for?"
"What's it for? … Oh, haven't you eyes in your head!"
Isak went off deep in thought. Two days later he came back, with a window and a door for the parlour, and a door for the bedroom; also he had hung round his neck in front a good-sized packing-case, and full of provisions to boot.
"You'll carry yourself to death one day," said Inger.
"Ho, indeed!" Isak was very far indeed from being dead; he took out a bottle of medicine from his pocket—naphtha it was—and gave it to Inger with orders to take it regularly and get well again. And there were the windows and the painted doors that he could fairly boast of; he set to work at once fitting them in. Oh, such little doors, and secondhand at that, but painted up all neat and fine again in red and white; 'twas almost as good as having pictures on the walls.
And now they moved into the new building, and the animals had the turf hut to themselves, only a lambing ewe was left with Cow, lest she should feel lonely.
They had done well, these builders in the waste: ay, 'twas a wonder and a marvel to themselves.
Chapter II
Isak worked on the land until the frost act in; there were stones and roots to be dug up and cleared away, and the meadow to be levelled ready for next year. When the ground hardened, he left his field work and became a woodman, felling and cutting up great quantities of logs.
"What do you want with all these logs?" Inger would say.
"Oh, they'll be useful some way," said Isak off-handedly, as though he had no plan. But Isak had a plan, never fear. Here was virgin forest, a dense growth, right close up to the house, a barrier hedging in his fields where he wanted room. Moreover, there must be some way of getting the logs down to the village that winter; there were folk enough would be glad of wood for firing. It was sound enough, and Isak was in no doubt; he stuck to his work in the forest, felling trees and cutting them up into logs.
Inger came out often, to watch him at work. He took no notice, but made as if her coming were no matter, and not at all a thing he wished for her to do; but she understood all the same that it pleased him to have her there. They had a strange way, too, of speaking to each other at times.
"Couldn't you find things to do but come out here and get stark frozen?" says Isak.
"I'm well enough for me," says Inger. "But I can't see there's any living sense in you working yourself to death like you do."
"Ho! You just pick up that coat of mine there and put it on you."
"Put on your coat? Likely, indeed. I've no time to sit here now, with
Goldenhorns ready to calve and all."
"H'm, Calving, you say?"
"As if you didn't know! But what do you think now about that same calf. Let it stay and be weaned, maybe?"
"Do as you think; 'tis none of my business with calves and things."
"Well, 'twould be a pity to eat up calf, seems to me. And leave us with but one cow on the place."
"Don't seem to me like you'd do that anyway," says Isak.
That was their way. Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth.
And Goldenhorns calved. A great day in the wilderness, a joy and a delight. They gave her flour-wash, and Isak himself saw to it there was no stint of flour, though he had carried it all the way himself, on his back. And there lay a pretty calf, a beauty, red-flanked like her mother, and comically bewildered at the miracle of coming into the world. In a couple of years she would be having calves of her own.
"'Twill be a grand fine cow when she grows up," said Inger. "And what are we to call her, now? I can't think."
Inger was childish in her ways, and no clever wit for anything.
"Call her?" said Isak. "Why, Silverhorns, of course; what else?"
The first snow came. As soon as there was a passable road, Isak set out for the village, full of concealment and mystery as ever, when Inger asked his errand. And sure enough, he came back this time with a new and unthinkable surprise. A horse and sledge, nothing less.
"Here's foolishness," says Inger. "And you've not stolen it, I suppose?"
"Stolen it?"
"Well, found it, then?"
Now if only he could have said: "'Tis my horse—our horse. … " But to tell the truth, he had only hired it, after all. Hired horse and sledge to cart his logs.
Isak drove down with his loads of firewood, and brought back food, herrings and flour. And one day he came up with a young bull on the sledge; bought it for next to nothing, by reason they were getting short of fodder down in the village. Shaggy and thin, no ways a beauty, but decently built for all that, and wanted no more than proper feed to set it right. And with a cow they had already. …
"What'll you be bringing up next?" said Inger.
Isak brought up a host of things. Brought up planks and a saw he had got in exchange for timber; a grindstone, a wafer iron, tools—all in exchange for his logs. Inger was bursting with riches, and said each time: "What, more things! When we've cattle and all a body could think of!"
They had enough to meet their needs for no little time to come, and were well-to-do folk. What was Isak to start on again next spring? He had thought it all out, tramping down beside his loads of wood that winter; he would clear more ground over the hillside and level it off, cut up more logs to dry through the summer, and