never the least bit miserable and full of fear, Inger was all but
vanished already through the fringe of the forest.

"Hem!" He cleared his throat, and called, "Will you be coming back
maybe?" He had not meant to ask her that, but....

"Coming back? Why, what's in your mind? Of course I'll be coming
back."

"H'm."

So he was left alone again--eyah, well ...! With his strength, and the
love of work that was in him, he could not idle in and out about the
hut doing nothing; he set to, clearing timber, felling straight, good
sticks, and cutting them flat on two sides. He worked at this all
through the day, then he milked the goats and went to bed.

Sadly bare and empty now in the hut; a heavy silence clung about
the peat walls and the earthen floor; a deep and solemn loneliness.
Spinning-wheel and carding-combs were in their place; the beads, too,
were safe as they had been, stowed away in a bag under the roof. Inger
had taken nothing of her belongings. But Isak, unthinkably simple as
he was, grew afraid of the dark in the light summer nights, and saw
Shapes and Things stealing past the window. He got up before dawn,
about two o'clock by the light, and ate his breakfast, a mighty dish
of porridge to last the day, and save the waste of time in cooking
more. In the evening he turned up new ground, to make a bigger field
for the potatoes.

Three days he worked with spade and ax by turns; Inger should be