Then there
might come a faint little rustling, a curled and shrunken leaf rolling and
rustling down over the frozen branches. It was like the sound of a little
spring. Then the soughing of earth and sky again. A gentleness came over
me; a mute was set on all my strings.
Lars Falkenberg wanted to know where I had been and where I was going.
Reservoir? A senseless business that reservoir thing. As if people
couldn't carry water for themselves. The Captain went in too much for
these new-fangled inventions and ploughing over standing crops and
such-like; he'd find himself landed one day. A rich harvest, they said.
Ho, yes, but they never troubled to think what it must cost, with machines
for this and that, and a pack of men to every machine again. What mustn't
it have cost, now, for Grindhusen and me that summer! And then himself
this autumn. In the old days it had been music and plenty at Ovrebo, and
some of us had been asked into the parlour to sing. "I'll say no more,"
said Lars.
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