“Bring up three yards of cotton print, if you can,” Inger called after him.

“What do you want with that?” said Isak.

Isak was long away; it almost seemed as if he had gone for good.  Inger looked at the weather every day, noting the way of the wind, as if she were expecting a sailing-ship; she went out at nighttime to listen; even thought of taking the child on her arm and going after him.  Then at last he came back, with a horse and cart. “Piro!” shouted Isak as he drew up; shouted so as to be heard.  And the horse was well behaved, and stood as quiet as could be, nodding at the turf hut as if it knew the place again.  Nevertheless, Isak must call out, “Hi, come and hold the horse a bit, can’t you?”

Out goes Inger.  “Where is it now?  Oh, Isak, have you hired him again?  Where have you been all this time?  ’Tis six days gone.”

“Where d’you think I’d be?  Had to go all sorts of ways round to find a road for this cart of mine.  Hold the horse a bit, can’t you?”

“Cart of yours!  You don’t mean to say you’ve bought that cart?”

Isak dumb; Isak swelling with things unspoken.  He lifts out a plough and a harrow he has brought; nails, provisions, a grindstone, a sack of corn.  “And how’s the child?” he asks.

“Child’s all right.  Have you bought that cart, that’s what I want to know?  For here have I been longing and longing for a loom,” says she jestingly, in her gladness at having him back again.

Isak dumb once more, for a long space, busied with his own affairs, pondering, looking round for a place to put all his goods and implements; it was hard to find room for them all.  But when Inger gave up asking, and began talking to the horse instead, he came out of his lofty silence at last.

“Ever see a farm without a horse and cart, and plough and harrows, and all the rest of it?  And since you want to know, why, I’ve bought that horse and cart, and all that’s in it,” says he.

And Inger could only shake her head and murmur:  “Well, I never did see such a man!”

Isak was no longer littleness and humility; he had paid, as it were, like a gentleman, for Goldenhorns.  “Here you are,” he could say.  “I’ve brought along a horse; we can call it quits.”

He stood there, upright and agile, against his wont; shifted the plough once more, picked it up and carried it with one hand and stood it up against the wall.  Oh, he could manage an estate!  He took up the other things:  the harrow, the grindstone, a new fork he had bought, all the costly agricultural implements, treasures of the new home, a grand array.  All requisite appliances—­nothing was lacking.

“H’m.  As for that loom, why, we’ll manage that too, I dare say, as long as I’ve my health.  And there’s your cotton print; they’d none but blue, so I took that.”

There was no end to the things he brought.  A bottomless well, rich in all manner of things, like a city store.