Isak took the matter sensibly—­what else was there to do?  He knew now why Inger had always taken care to be left alone at every birth; to be alone with her fears of how the child might be, and face the danger with no one by.  Three times she had done the same thing.  Isak shook his head, touched with pity for her ill fate—­poor Inger.  He learned of the coming of the Lapp with the hare, and acquitted her.  It led to a great love between them, a wild love; they drew closer to each other in their peril.  Inger was full of a desperate sweetness towards him, and the great heavy fellow, lumbering carrier of burdens, felt a greed and an endless desire for her in himself.  And Inger, for all that she wore hide shoes like a Lapp, was no withered little creature as the Lapland women are, but splendidly big.  It was summer now, and she went about barefooted, with her naked legs showing almost to the knee—­Isak could not keep his eyes from those bare legs.

All through the summer she went about singing bits of hymns, and she taught Eleseus to say prayers; but there grew up in her an unchristian hate of all Lapps, and she spoke plainly enough to any that passed.  Some one might have sent them again; like as not they had a hare in their bag as before; let them go on their way, and no more about it.

“A hare?  What hare?”

“Ho, you haven’t heard perhaps what Os-Anders he did that time?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t care who knows it—­he came up here with a hare, when I was with child.”

“Dear, and that was a dreadful thing!  And what happened?”

“Never you mind what happened, just get along with you, that’s all.  Here’s a bite of food, and get along.”

“You don’t happen to have an odd bit of leather anywhere, I could mend my shoe with?”

“No I But I’ll give you a bit of stick if you don’t get out!”

Now a Lapp will beg as humbly as could be, but say no to him, and he turns bad, and threatens.  A pair of Lapps with two children came past the place; the children were sent up to the house to beg, and came back and said there was no one to be seen about the place.  The four of them stood there a while talking in their own tongue, then the man went up to see.  He went inside, and stayed.  Then his wife went up, and the children after; all of them stood inside the doorway, talking Lapp.  The man puts his head in the doorway and peeps through into the room; no one there either.  The clock strikes the hour, and the whole family stand listening in wonder.

Inger must have had some idea there were strangers about; she comes hurrying down the hillside, and seeing Lapps, strange Lapps into the bargain, asks them straight out what they are doing there.  “What do you want in here?  Couldn’t you see there was no one at home?”

“H’m ...” says the man.

“Get out with you,” says Inger again, “and go on your way.”

The Lapps move out slowly, unwillingly.  “We were just listening to that clock of yours,” says the man; “’tis a wonder to hear, that it is.”