ready for next year. When the ground hardened, he left his field work
and became a woodman, felling and cutting up great quantities of logs.

"What do you want with all these logs?" Inger would say.

"Oh, they'll be useful some way," said Isak off-handedly, as though he
had no plan. But Isak had a plan, never fear. Here was virgin forest,
a dense growth, right close up to the house, a barrier hedging in
his fields where he wanted room. Moreover, there must be some way of
getting the logs down to the village that winter; there were folk
enough would be glad of wood for firing. It was sound enough, and Isak
was in no doubt; he stuck to his work in the forest, felling trees and
cutting them up into logs.

Inger came out often, to watch him at work. He took no notice, but
made as if her coming were no matter, and not at all a thing he wished
for her to do; but she understood all the same that it pleased him to
have her there. They had a strange way, too, of speaking to each other
at times.

"Couldn't you find things to do but come out here and get stark
frozen?" says Isak.

"I'm well enough for me," says Inger. "But I can't see there's any
living sense in you working yourself to death like you do."

"Ho! You just pick up that coat of mine there and put it on you."

"Put on your coat? Likely, indeed. I've no time to sit here now, with
Goldenhorns ready to calve and all."