But if it had come to this, that he could no longer go out alone and heave up a stone, why, things were sorely changed; ay, ’twas a bad look-out, and the more need to get that site cleared quick as might be.  Age was upon him, he was ripening for the chimney-corner.  The triumph he had stolen in the matter of the door-slab faded away in a few days; ’twas a false thing, and not made to last.  Isak stooped a little now in his walk.

Had he not once been so much of a man that he grew wakeful and attentive in a moment if one but said a word of stone, a word of digging?  And ’twas no long time since, but a few years, no more.  Ay, and in those days, folk that were shy of a bit of draining work kept out of his way.  Now he was beginning, little by little, to take such matters more calmly; eyah, Herregud!  All things were changed, the land itself was different now, with broad telegraph roads up through the woods, that had not been there before, and rocks blasted and sundered up by the water, as they had not been before.  And folk, too, were changed.  They did not greet coming and going as in the old days, but nodded only, or maybe not even that.

But then—­in the old days there had been no Sellanraa, but only a turf hut, while now....  There had been no Margrave in the old days.

Ay, but Margrave, what was he now?  A pitiful thing, nothing superhuman, but old and fading, going the way of all flesh.  What though he had good bowels, and could eat well, when it gave him no strength?  ’Twas Sivert had the strength now, and a mercy it was so—­but think, if Isak had had it too!  A sorry thing, to find his works running down.  He had toiled like a man, carrying loads enough for any beast of burden; now, he could exercise his patience in resting.

Isak is ill-pleased, heavy at heart.

Here lies an old hat, an old sou’wester, rotting on the ground.  Carried there by the gale, maybe, or maybe the lads had brought it there to the edge of the wood years ago, when they were little ones.  It lies there year after year, rotting and rotting away; but once it had been a new sou’wester, all yellow and new.  Isak remembers the day he came home with it from the store, and Inger had said it was a fine hat.  A year or so after, he had taken it to a painter down in the village, and had it blacked and polished, and the brim done in green.  And when he came home, Inger thought it a finer hat than before.  Inger always thought everything was fine; ay, ’twas a good life those days, cutting faggots, with Inger to look on—­his best days.  And when March and April came, Inger and he would be wild after each other, just like the birds and beasts in the woods; and when May was come, he would sow his corn and plant potatoes, living and thriving from day to dawn.  Work and sleep, loving and dreaming, he was like the first big ox, and that was a wonder to see, big and bright as a king.  But there was no such May to the years now.  No such thing.