“You’ve no call to fetch along all such stuff,” said he.  “Tis more than’s needed.”

“I’ve more if I like to fetch it.  And there’s uncle Sivert besides—­you’ve heard of him?” “No.”

“Why, he’s a rich man, and district treasurer besides.”

Love makes a fool of the wise.  Isak felt he must do something grand himself, and overdid it.  “What I was going to say; you’ve no need to bother with hoeing potatoes.  I’ll do it myself the evening, when I come home.”

And he took his ax and went off to the woods.

She heard him felling in the woods, not so far off; she could hear from the crash that he was felling big timber.  She listened for a while, and then went out to the potato field and set to work hoeing.  Love makes fools wise.

Isak came home in the evening, hauling a huge trunk by a rope.  Oh, that simple and innocent Isak, he made all the noise he could with his tree-trunk, and coughed and hemmed, all for her to come out and wonder at him.  And sure enough: 

“Why, you’re out of your senses,” said Inger when she came out.  “Is that work for a man single-handed?” He made no answer; wouldn’t have said a word for anything.  To do a little more than was work for a man single-handed was nothing to speak of—­nothing at all.  A stick of timber—­huh!  “And what are you going to do with it?” she asked.

“Oh, we’ll see,” he answered carelessly, as if scarcely heeding she was there.

But when he saw that she had hoed the potatoes after all he was not pleased.  It was as if she had done almost as much as he; and that was not to his liking.  He slipped the rope from the tree-trunk and went off with it once more.

“What, haven’t you done yet?”

“No,” said he gruffly.

And he came back with another stick like the last, only with no noise nor sign of being out of breath; hauled it up to the hut like an ox, and left it there.

That summer he felled a mass of timber, and brought it to the hut.

Chapter II

Inger packed up some food one day in her calfskin bag.  “I’d thought of going across to see my people, just how they’re faring.”

“Ay,” said Isak.

“I must have a bit of talk with them about things.”

Isak did not go out at once to see her off, but waited quite a while.  And when at last he shambled out, looking never the least bit anxious, never the least bit miserable and full of fear, Inger was all but vanished already through the fringe of the forest.

“Hem!” He cleared his throat, and called, “Will you be coming back maybe?” He had not meant to ask her that, but....

“Coming back?  Why, what’s in your mind?  Of course I’ll be coming back.”

“H’m.”

So he was left alone again—­eyah, well ...!  With his strength, and the love of work that was in him, he could not idle in and out about the hut doing nothing; he set to, clearing timber, felling straight, good sticks, and cutting them flat on two sides.  He worked at this all through the day, then he milked the goats and went to bed.