immediately to let me have my say. When this had happened several times, I
grew tired of winning, and stopped too. But that merely made him nod and
say: "Go ahead."

I explained to him that I idled in solitude, studying strange trees, and
writing a thing or two about them, that I lived in a hut, but that today I
had finished my stock of provisions and had had to go to the village. When
he heard about the hut, he stopped chewing, and sat as though he were
listening; then he said hastily: "Yes, in a way I know these telegraph
poles across the mountains very well. Not these particular poles, but
others. I was a linesman till not long ago."

"Were you?" I said. "Haven't you passed my hut today?" I added.

He hesitated a moment, but when he saw that I was not trying to put him in
the wrong, he admitted that he had been in the hut and rested, and found
my crisp-bread there.

"It wasn't easy to sit there without taking some of it," he said.

We spoke of many things. His language was hardly coarse at all, nor did he
dawdle over his food. My own manners had run wild to such an extent that I
valued his good behavior.

He offered to help me carry my pack as a mark of his gratitude for the
food, and I accepted his offer. It was in this way that the stranger
returned to the hut with me. As soon as I came in I saw a note on the
table, a sort of thanks for the bread; it was an extremely ill-mannered
epistle, full of obscene expressions. When Solem saw what I was reading,
his iron face broke into a smile. I pretended not to understand the note