“Brede, he talks of selling out,” said the father.

“Ay,” said the son.  “Wonder what he’ll be asking for the place?”

“Ay, I wonder.”

“You’ve not heard anything?”

“No.”

“I’ve heard two hundred.”

The father thought for a while, and said:  “What d’you think, ’ll this be a good stone?”

“All depends if we can get this shell off him,” said Sivert, and was on his feet in a moment, giving the setting-hammer to his father, and taking the sledge himself.  He grew red and hot, stood up to his full height and let the sledge-hammer fall; rose again and let it fall; twenty strokes alike—­twenty thunder-strokes.  He spared neither tool nor strength; it was heavy work; his shirt rucked up from his trousers at the waist, leaving him bare in front; he lifted on his toes each time to give the sledge a better swing.  Twenty strokes.

“Now!  Let’s look!” cried his father.

The son stops, and asks:  “Marked him any?”

And they lay down together to look at the stone; look at the beast, the devil of a thing; no, not marked any as yet.

“I’ve a mind to try with the sledge alone,” said the father, and stood up.  Still harder work this, sheer force alone, the hammer grew hot, the steel crushed, the pen grew blunt.

“She’ll be slipping the head,” he said, and stopped.  “And I’m no hand at this any more,” he said.

Oh, but he never meant it; it was not his thought, that he was no hand at the work any more!

This father, this barge of a man, simple, full of patience and goodness, he would let his son strike the last few blows and cleave the stone.  And there it lay, split in two.

“Ay, you’ve the trick of it,” said the father.  “H’m, yes ...  Breidablik ... might make something but of that place.”

“Ay, should think so,” said the son.

“Only the land was fairly ditched and turned.”

“The house’d have to be done up.”

“Ay, that of course.  Place all done up—­’twould mean a lot of work at first, but ...  What I was going to say, d’you know if your mother was going to church come Sunday?”

“Ay, she said something like it.”

“Ho!...  H’m.  Keep your eyes open now and look out for a good big door-slab for the new house.  You haven’t seen a bit would do?”

“No,” said Sivert.

And they fell to work again.

A couple of days later both agreed they had enough stone now for the walls.  It was Friday evening; they sat taking a breathing-space, and talking together the while.

“H’m—­what d’you say?” said the father.  “Should we think it over, maybe, about Breidablik?”

“How d’you mean?” asked the son.  “What to do with it?”

“Why, I don’t know.  There’s the school there, and it’s midway down this tract now.”

“And what then?” asked the son.  “I don’t know what we’d do with it, though; it’s not worth much as it is.”