“I wish you could manage to make another bed,” she said to Isak one day.

“Ho!” said he.

“Why, there’s no hurry, but still....”

They started getting in the potatoes, and finished by Michaelmas, as the custom is.  It was a middling year—­a good year; once again it was seen that potatoes didn’t care so much about the weather, but grew up all the same, and could stand a deal.  A middling year—­a good year ... well, not perhaps, if they worked it out exactly, but that they couldn’t do this year.  A Lapp had passed that way one day and said how fine their potatoes were up there; it was much worse, he said, down in the village.

And now Isak had a few weeks more to work the ground before the frost set in.  The cattle were out, grazing where they pleased; it was good to work with them about, and hear the bells, though it did take some of his time now and again.  There was the bull, mischievous beast, would take to butting at the lichen stacks; and as for the goats, they were high and low and everywhere, even to the roof of the hut.

Troubles great and small.

One day Isak heard a sudden shout; Inger stood on the door-slab with the child in her arms, pointing over to the bull and the pretty little cow Silverhorns—­they were making love.  Isak threw down his pick and raced over to the pair, but it was too late, by the look of it.  The mischief was done.  “Oh, the little rascal, she’s all too young—­half a year too soon, a child!” Isak got her into the hut, but it was too late.

“Well, well,” says Inger, “’tis none so bad after all, in a way; if she’d waited, we’d have had both of them bearing at the same time.”  Oh, that Inger; not so bright as some, maybe, yet, for all that, she may well have known what she was about when she let the pair loose together that morning.

Winter came, Inger carding and spinning, Isak driving down with loads of wood; fine dry wood and good going; all his debts paid off and settled; horse and cart, plough and harrow his very own.  He drove down with Inger’s goats’ milk cheeses, and brought back woollen thread, a loom, shuttles and beam and all; brought back flour and provisions, more planks, and boards and nails; one day he brought home a lamp.

“As true as I’m here I won’t believe it,” says Inger.  But she had long had in her mind about a lamp for all that.  They lit it the same evening, and were in paradise; little Eleseus he thought, no doubt, it was the sun.  “Look how he stares all wondering like,” said Isak.  And now Inger could spin of an evening by lamplight.

He brought up linen for shirts, and new hide shoes for Inger.  She had asked for some dye-stuffs, too, for the wool, and he brought them.  Then one day he came back with a clock.  With what?—­A clock.  This was too much for Inger; she was overwhelmed and could not say a word.  Isak hung it up on the wall, and set it at a guess, wound it up, and let it strike.  The child turned its eyes at the sound and then looked at its mother.  “Ay, you may wonder,” said Inger, and took the child to her, not a little touched herself.  Of all good things, here in a lonely place, there was nothing could be better than a clock to go all the dark winter through, and strike so prettily at the hours.