“Ho, a boy.”

“And I can’t for the life of me think what we’re to call him,” said Inger.

Isak peeped at the little red face; well shaped it was, and no hare-lip, and a growth of hair all thick on the head.  A fine little fellow for his rank and station in a packing-case; Isak felt himself curiously weak.  The rugged man stood there with a miracle before him; a thing created first of all in a sacred mist, showing forth now in life with a little face like an allegory.  Days and years, and the miracle would be a human being.

“Come and have your food,” said Inger....

* * * * *

Isak is a woodman, felling trees and sawing logs.  He is better off now than before, having a saw.  He works away, and mighty piles of wood grow up; he makes a street of them, a town, built up of stacks and piles of wood.  Inger is more about the house now, and does not come out as before to watch him at his work; Isak must find a pretext now and then to slip off home for a moment instead.  Queer to have a little fellow like that about the place!  Isak, of course, would never dream of taking any notice—­’twas but a bit of a thing in a packing-case.  And as for being fond of it ...  But when it cried, well, it was only human nature to feel just a little something for a cry like that; a little tiny cry like that.

“Don’t touch him!” says Inger.  “With your hands all messed up with resin and all!”

“Resin, indeed!” says Isak.  “Why, I haven’t had resin on my hands since I built this house.  Give me the boy, let me take him—­there, he’s as right as can be!”

* * * * *

Early in May came a visitor.  A woman came over the hills to that lonely place where none ever came; she was of Inger’s kinsfolk, though not near, and they made her welcome.

“I thought I’d just look in,” she says, “and see how Goldenhorns gets on since she left us.”

Inger looks at the child, and talks to it in a little pitying voice:  “Ah, there’s none asks how he’s getting on, that’s but a little tiny thing.”

“Why, as for that, any one can see how he’s getting on.  A fine little lad and all.  And who’d have thought it a year gone, Inger, to find you here with house and husband and child and all manner of things.”

“’Tis no doing of mine to praise.  But there’s one sitting there that took me as I was and no more.”

“And wedded?—­Not wedded yet, no, I see.”

“We’ll see about it, the time this little man’s to be christened,” says Inger.  “We’d have been wedded before, but couldn’t come by it, getting down to a church and all.  What do you say, Isak?”

“Wedded?” says Isak.  “Why, yes, of course.”

“But if as you’d help us, Oline,” says Inger.  “Just to come up for a few days in the off time once, and look to the creatures here while we’re away?”

Ay, Oline would do that.