A miserable day, and a long night, and a day beyond.  Isak went out of the house and lay outside, for all that there was hay to be got in; Sivert was with his father.  Inger had little Leopoldine and the animals to keep her company; but lonely she was for all that, crying nearly all the time and shaking her head at herself.  Only once in all her life before had she felt so moved, and this day called it to mind; it was when she had lain in her bed and throttled a newborn child.

Where were Isak and his son?  They had not been idle; no, they had stolen a day and a night or thereabouts from the haymaking, and had built a boat up on the lake.  Oh, a rough and poor-looking vessel enough, but strong and sound as their work had always been; they had a boat now, and could go fishing with nets.

When they came home the hay was dry as ever.  They had cheated providence by trusting it, and suffered no loss; they had gained by it.  And then Sivert flung out an arm, and said:  “Ho!  Mother’s been haymaking!” Isak looked down over the fields and said “H’m.”  Isak had noticed already that some of the hay had been shifted; Inger ought to be home now for her midday meal.  It was well done indeed of her to get in the hay, after he had scolded her the day before and said “Huttch!” And it was no light hay to move; she must have worked hard, and all the cows and goats to milk besides....  “Go in and get something to eat,” he said to Sivert.

“Aren’t you coming, then?”

“No.”

A little while after, Inger came out and stood humbly on the door-slab and said: 

“If you’d think of yourself a little—­and come in and have a bite to eat.”

Isak grumbled at that and said “H’m.”  But it was so strange a thing of late for Inger to be humble in any way, that his stubbornness was shaken.

“If you could manage to set a couple of teeth in my rake, I could get on again with the hay,” said she.  Ay, she came to her husband, the master of the place, to ask for something, and was grateful that he did not turn scornfully away.

“You’ve worked enough,” said he, “raking and carting and all.”

“No, ’tis not enough.”

“I’ve no time, anyway, to mend rakes now.  You can see there’s rain coming soon.”

And Isak went off to his work.

It was all meant to save her, no doubt; for the couple of minutes it would have taken to mend the rake would have been more than tenfold repaid by letting Inger work on.  Anyhow, Inger came out with her rake as it was, and fell to haymaking with a will; Sivert came up with the horse and haycart, and all went at it, sweating at the work, and the hay was got in.  It was a good stroke of work, and Isak fell to thinking once more of the powers above that guide all our ways—­from stealing a Daler to getting a crop of hay.  Moreover, there lay the boat; after half a generation of thinking it over, the boat was finished; it was there, up on the lake.