either from the party yesterday or from his low spirits; he felt that
it was all over with the coasting-hill for that year, and with it,
forever. He longed for something different as he threaded his way in
among the tree-trunks, where the snow fell softly. A frightened
ptarmigan screamed and fluttered a few yards away, but everything else
stood as if awaiting a word which never was spoken. But what his
aspirations were, he did not distinctly know, only they concerned
nothing at home, nothing abroad, neither pleasure nor work; but rather
something far above, soaring upward like a song. Soon all became
concentrated in one defined desire, and this was to be confirmed in the
spring, and on that occasion to be number one. His heart beat wildly
as he thought of it, and before he could yet hear his father's axe in
the quivering little trees, this wish throbbed within him with more
intensity than anything he had known in all his life.

His father, as usual, did not have much to say to him; they chopped
away together and both dragged the wood into heaps. Now and then they
chanced to meet, and on one such occasion Oyvind remarked, in a
melancholy tone, "A houseman has to work very hard."

"He as well as others," said the father, as he spit in the palm of his
hand and took up the axe again.

When the tree was felled and the father had drawn it up to the pile,
Oyvind said,--

"If you were a gardman you would not have to work so hard."

"Oh! then there would doubtless be other things to distress us," and he
grasped his axe with both hands.