He would still take his daily walk out to the haystack on the knoll,
drag himself slowly around it, groping with his hands to feel it, as
if he wished to make sure that it still stood there, firm as a rock
and untouched. He would stretch out his hands and touch its face and
count the strips of turf to himself in a whisper.

Brandur still tilled the land, though he kept but little help and
was living chiefly on the fruits of his former labours. He had fine
winter pastures, and good meadows quite near the house, from which
the hay could easily be brought in. The old man steadfastly refused
to adopt modern farming methods; he had never levelled off the
hummocks, nor drained or irrigated the land. But he did hire a few
harvest hands in the middle of the season, paying them in butter,
tallow, and the flesh of sheep bellies. The wages he paid were never
high, yet he always paid whatever had been agreed upon.

Old Brandur had been blessed with only one child, a daughter named
Gudrun. who had married a farmer in the district. Since his
daughter's marriage, Brandur kept a housekeeper and one farm hand, a
young man whom Brandur had reared and who, it was rumoured, was his
natural son. But that has nothing to do with the story.

When Brandur had reached a ripe old age, there came a winter with
much frost and snow. Time and again, some of the snow and ice would
thaw, but then a hard frost would come, glazing everything in an icy
coating. This went on until late in April. By that time, almost
every farmer in the district had used up his hay; every one of them
was at the end of his store, and nowhere was there a blade of grass
to feed the live-stock, for the land still lay frozen under its
blanket of hard-packed snow and ice. When things had come to this