"The woman from the place down below. Did you see her go?"

"Yes."

"Had she a goat with her?"

"No," said the boys. "A goat?"

"Didn't she have a goat with her when she left?"

"No. What goat?"

Isak wondered and wondered. In the evening when the animals came home,
he counted the goats once over--there were sixteen. He counted them
once more, counted them five times. There were sixteen. None missing.

Isak breathed again. But what did it all mean? Oline, miserable
creature, couldn't she count as far as sixteen? He asked her angrily:
"What's all this nonsense? there _are_ sixteen goats."

"Are there sixteen?" she asked innocently.

"Ay."

"Ay, well, then."

"A nice one to count, you are."

Oline answered quietly, in an injured tone, "Since all the goats are
there, why, then, thank Heaven, you can't say Oline's been eating them