“Shall we walk out and take a look at the gard in this fine weather?”

“Yes; let us do so.  I have work-people on the slope; they are gathering leaves, but they do not work except when I am watching them.”

He totters off after his large cap and staff, and says, meanwhile,—­

“They do not seem to like to work for me; I cannot understand it.”

When they were once out and turning the corner of the house, he paused.

“Just look here.  No order:  the wood flung about, the axe not even stuck in the block.”

He stooped with difficulty, picked up the axe, and drove it in fast.

“Here you see a skin that has fallen down; but has any one hung it up again?”

He did it himself.

“And the store-house; do you think the ladder is carried away?”

He set it aside.  He paused, and looking at the school-master, said,—­

“This is the way it is every single day.”

As they proceeded upward they heard a merry song from the slopes.

“Why, they are singing over their work,” said the school-master.

“That is little Knut Ostistuen who is singing; he is helping his father gather leaves.  Over yonder my people are working; you will not find them singing.”

“That is not one of the parish songs, is it?”

“No, it is not.”

“Oyvind Pladsen has been much in Ostistuen; perhaps that is one of the songs he has introduced into the parish, for there is always singing where he is.”

There was no reply to this.

The field they were crossing was not in good condition; it required attention.  The school-master commented on this, and then Ole stopped.

“It is not in my power to do more,” said he, quite pathetically.  “Hired work-people without attention cost too much.  But it is hard to walk over such a field, I can assure you.”

As their conversation now turned on the size of the gard, and what portion of it most needed cultivation, they decided to go up the slope that they might have a view of the whole.  When they at length had reached a high elevation, and could take it all in, the old man became moved.

“Indeed, I should not like to leave it so.  We have labored hard down there, both I and those who went before me, but there is nothing to show for it.”

A song rang out directly over their heads, but with the peculiar shrilling of a boy’s voice when it is poured out with all its might.  They were not far from the tree in whose top was perched little Knut Ostistuen, gathering leaves for his father, and they were compelled to listen to the boy:—­

     “When on mountain peaks you hie,
          ’Mid green slopes to tarry,
      In your scrip pray no more tie,
          Than you well can carry. 
      Take no hindrances along
          To the crystal fountains;
      Drown them in a cheerful song,
          Send them down the mountains.