No help for it; he must dig again.  Try blasting?  Not a word!  No, dig again.  He was intent on his work now.  The stone should come up!  It would be wrong to say there was anything at all perverse in this on Isak’s part; it was the ingrown love of a worker on the soil, but altogether without tenderness.  It was a foolish sight; first gathering, as it were, about the stone from all sides, then making a dash at it, then digging all round its sides and fumbling at it, throwing up the earth with his bare hands, ay, so he did.  Yet there was nothing of a caress in it all.  Warmth, yes, but the warmth of zeal alone.

Try the lever again?  He thrust it down where there was best hold—­no.  An altogether remarkable instance of obstinacy and defiance on the part of the stone.  But it seemed to be giving.  Isak tries again, with a touch of hope; the earth-breaker has a feeling now that the stone is no longer invincible.  Then the lever slipped, throwing him to the ground.  “Devil!” said he.  Ay, he said that.  His cap had got thrust down over one ear as he fell, making him look like a robber, like a Spaniard.  He spat.

Here comes Inger.  “Isak, come in and have your food now,” says she, kindly and pleasant as can be.

“Ay,” says he, but will have her no nearer, and wants no questions.

Oh, but Inger, never dreaming, she comes nearer.

“What’s in your mind now?” she asks, to soften him with a hint of the way he thinks out some new grand thing almost every day.

But Isak is sullen, terribly sullen and stern; he says:  “Nay, I don’t know.”

And Inger again, foolish that she is—­ugh, keeps on talking and asking and will not go.

“Seeing as you’ve seen it yourself,” says he at last, “I’m getting up this stone here.”

“Ho, going to get him up?”

“Ay.”

“And couldn’t I help a bit at all?” she asks.

Isak shakes his head.  But it was a kindly thought, anyway, that she would have helped him, and he can hardly be harsh in return.

“If you just wait the least bit of a while,” says he, and runs home for the hammers.

If he could only get the stone rough a bit, knocking off a flake or so in the right spot, it would give the lever a better hold.  Inger holds the setting-hammer, and Isak strikes.  Strikes, strikes.  Ay, sure enough, off goes a flake. “’Twas a good help,” says Isak, “and thanks.  But don’t trouble about food for me this bit of a while, I must get this stone up first.”

But Inger does not go.  And to tell the truth, Isak is pleased enough to have her there watching him at his work; ’tis a thing has always pleased him, since their young days.  And lo, he gets a fine purchase now on the lever, and puts his weight into it—­the stone moves!  “He’s moving,” says Inger.

“’Tis but your nonsense,” says Isak.

“Nonsense, indeed!  But it is!”