simply vanished. She is a thieving baggage, nothing less, and she may
know it! Oh, he would just have liked Oline to be standing outside and
hear it, and be thoroughly frightened for once.

He strides out from the shed, goes to the stable and counts the horse;
from there he will go in--will go into the house and speak his mind.
He walks so fast that his shirt stands out like a very angry shirt
behind him. But Oline as like as not has noticed something, looking
out through the glass window; she appears in the doorway, quietly and
steadily, with buckets in her hands, on her way to the cowshed.

"What have you done with that ewe with the flat ears?" he asks.

"Ewe?" she asks.

"Ay. If she'd been here she'd have had two lambs by now. What have
you done with them? She always had two. You've done me out of three
together, do you understand?"

Oline is altogether overwhelmed, altogether annihilated by the
accusation; she wags her head, and her legs seem to melt away under
her--she might fall and hurt herself. Her head is busy all the time;
her ready wit had always helped her, always served her well; it must
not fail her now.

"I steal goats and I steal the sheep," she says quietly. "And what
do I do with them, I should like to know? I don't eat them up all by
myself, I suppose?"

"You know best what you do with them."