coming on the next. 'Twould be but reasonable to have a platter of
fish for her when she came--but the straight road to the water lay by
the way she would come, and it might seem.... So he went a longer way;
a new way, over the hills where he had never been before. Grey rock
and brown, and strewed about with bits of heavy stone, heavy as copper
or lead. There might be many things in those heavy stones; gold or
silver, like as not--he had no knowledge of such things, and did not
care. He came to the water; the fly was up, and the fish were biting
well that night. He brought home a basket of fish that Inger would
open her eyes to see! Going back in the morning by the way he had
come, he picked up a couple of the heavy little stones among the
hills; they were brown, with specks of dark blue here and there, and
wondrous heavy in the hand.

Inger had not come, and did not come. This was the fourth day. He
milked the goats as he had used to do when he lived alone with them
and had no other to help; then he went up to a quarry near by and
carried down stones; great piles of carefully chosen blocks and
flakes, to build a wall. He was busy with no end of things.

On the fifth evening, he turned in to rest with a little fear at his
heart--but there were the carding-combs and spinning-wheel, and the
string of beads. Sadly empty and bare in the hut, and never a sound;
the hours were long, and when at last he did hear something like a
sound of footsteps outside, he told himself that it was fancy, nothing
more. "Eyah, _Herregud_!" [Footnote: Literally, "Lord God." The word
is frequently used, as here, in a sense of resignation, as it were a
sigh.] he murmured, desolate in spirit. And Isak was not one to use
words lightly. There was the tramping of feet again outside, and a
moment after something gliding past the window; something with horns,