Got so far, then—­and that was something.  The stone was, so to speak, converted now, was on his side; they were working together.  Isak hoists and heaves with his lever, and the stone moves, but no more.  He keeps at it a while, nothing more.  All at once he understands that it is not merely a question of weight, the dead pull of his body; no, the fact is that he has no longer his old strength, he has lost the tough agility that makes all the difference.  Weight?  An easy matter enough to hang on with his weight and break an iron-shod pole.  No, he was weakening, that was it.  And the patient man is filled with bitterness at the thought—­at least he might have been spared the shame of having Inger here to see it!

Suddenly he drops the lever and grasps the sledge.  A fury takes him, he is minded to go at it violently now.  And see, his cap still hangs on one ear, robber-fashion, and now he steps mightily, threateningly, round the stone, trying, as it were, to set himself in the proper light; ho, he will leave that stone a ruin and a wreck of what it had been.  Why not?  When a man is filled with mortal hatred of a stone, it is a mere formality to crush it.  And suppose the stone resists, suppose it declines to be crushed?  Why, let it try—­and see which of the two survives!

But then it is that Inger speaks up, a little timidly, again; seeing, no doubt, what is troubling him:  “What if we both hang on the stick there?” And the thing she calls a stick is the lever, nothing else.

“No!” cries Isak furiously.  But after a moment’s thought he says:  “Well, well, since you’re here—­though you might as well have gone home.  Let’s try.”

And they get the stone up on edge.  Ay, they manage that.  And “Puh!” says Isak.

But now comes a revelation, a strange thing to see.  The underside of the stone is flat, mightily broad, finely cut, smooth and even as a floor.  The stone is but the half of a stone, the other half is somewhere close by, no doubt.  Isak knows well enough that two halves of the same stone may lie in different places; the frost, no doubt, that in course of time had shifted them apart.  But he is all wonder and delight at the find; ’tis a useful stone of the best, a door-slab.  A round sum of money would not have filled this fieldworker’s mind with such content.  “A fine door-slab,” says he proudly.

And Inger, simple creature:  “Why!  Now how on earth could you tell that beforehand?”

“H’m,” says Isak.  “Think I’d go here digging about for nothing?”

They walk home together, Isak enjoying new admiration on false pretences; ’twas something he had not deserved, but it tasted but little different from the real thing.  He lets it be understood that he has been looking out for a suitable door-slab for a long time, and had found it at last.  After that, of course, there could be nothing in the least suspicious about his working there again; he could root about as much as he pleased on pretext of looking for the other half.  And when Sivert came home, he could get him to help.