up. And well for her, poor thing."

Oline had taken him in completely with her trickery; he was content,
imagining all was well. It did not occur to him, for instance, to
count the sheep. He did not trouble about further counting of the
stock at all. After all, Oline was not as bad as she might have been;
she kept house for him after a fashion, and looked to his cattle; she
was merely a fool, and that was worst for herself. Let her stay, let
her live--she was not worth troubling about. But it was a grey and
joyless thing to be Isak, as life was now.

Years had passed. Grass had grown on the roof of the house, even the
roof of the barn, which was some years younger, was green. The
wild mouse, native of the woods, had long since found way into the
storehouse. Tits and all manner of little birds swarmed about the
place; there were more birds up on the hillside; even the crows had
come. And most wonderful of all, the summer before, seagulls had
appeared, seagulls coming all the way up from the coast to settle on
the fields there in the wilderness. Isak's farm was known far and wide
to all wild creatures. And what of Eleseus and little Sivert when they
saw the gulls? Oh, 'twas some strange birds from ever so far away; not
so many of them, just six white birds, all exactly alike, waddling
this way and that about the fields, and pecking at the grass now and
then.

"Father, what have they come for?" asked the boys.

"There's foul weather coming out at sea," said their father. Oh, a
grand and mysterious thing to see those gulls!