animals were awake, the barn re-echoed with lowing the whole day long, and
the goats had long since been let out to pasture.

It was a long way between neighbors here; one or two cotters had cleared
an area in the forest, which they had then bought; apart from that, all
the land in sight belonged to the farm. Many new houses had been built
here as the traffic over the fjelds increased, and gargoyles, homelike and
Norwegian, sat on the gable ends, while the sound of a piano came from the
living-room. Do you know the place? You have been here, and the people of
the farm have asked after you.

Good days, nothing but good days: a suitable transition from solitude. I
speak to the young people who own the homestead now, and to the husband's
old father and young sister Josephine. The old man leaves his room to look
at me. He is terrifyingly old, perhaps ninety; his eyes are worn and
half-crazed, and his figure has shrunk to nothing. He toils with both
hands to drag himself into the day, and each time it is as though he left
his mother's womb anew and found a world before him:

"Look, how strange, there are houses on the farm," he thinks as he gazes
at them. And when the barn doors stand open, he looks at them, too, and
thinks:

"Just like a doorway; what can it be? Looks exactly like a doorway...."

And he stands still a long time staring at it.

But Josephine, the daughter of his latest marriage, is young and plays the
piano for me. Ah, Josephine! As she runs through the garden, her feet are
like a breeze under her skirt. How kind she is to the visitors! Surely she