Isak had been getting lichen, as much as he could, and had a fine lot,
all of the best. It was good fodder, and he treated it as he would
hay, covering it over with bark in the woods. There was only a
little still left out, and now, when Inger spoke of it, he answered
despairingly, as if it were all one, "I'll not take it in if it is
dry."

"Isak, you don't mean it!" said Inger.

And next day, sure enough, he did not take it in. He left it out and
never touched it, just as he had said. Let it stay where it was,
there'd be no rain anyway; let it stay where it was in God's name!
He could take it in some time before Christmas, if so be as the sun
hadn't burnt it all up to nothing.

Isak was deeply and thoroughly offended. It was no longer a pleasure
and a delight to sit outside on the door-slab and look out over his
lands and be the owner of it all. There was the potato field flowering
madly, and drying up; let the lichen stay where it was--what did he
care? That Isak! Who could say; perhaps he had a bit of a sly little
thought in his mind for all his stolid simpleness; maybe he knew what
he was doing after all, trying to tempt the blue sky now, at the
change of the moon.

That evening it looked like rain once more. "You ought to have got
that lichen in," said Inger.

"What for?" said Isak, looking all surprised.

"Ay, you with your nonsense--but it might be rain after all."