"I shall get a more discreet fellow than the school-master to manage
our money."

"Yes, he ought least of all to talk with your own wife."

Thore made no reply to this; he had just lit his pipe, and now, leaning
up against a bundle of fagots, he let his eyes wander, first from his
wife, then from his son, and fixed them on an old crow's-nest which
hung, half overturned, from a fir-branch above.

Oyvind sat by himself with the future stretching before him like a
long, smooth sheet of ice, across which for the first time he found
himself sweeping onward from shore to shore. That poverty hemmed him
in on every side, he felt, but for that reason his whole mind was bent
on breaking through it. From Marit it had undoubtedly parted him
forever; he regarded her as half engaged to Jon Hatlen; but he had
determined to vie with him and her through the entire race of life.
Never again to be rebuffed as he had been yesterday, and in view of
this to keep out of the way until he made something of himself, and
then, with the aid of Almighty God, to continue to be something,
--occupied all his thoughts, and there arose within his soul not a
single doubt of his success. He had a dim idea that through study he
would get on best; to what goal it would lead he must consider later.

There was coasting in the evening; the children came to the hill, but
Oyvind was not with them. He sat reading by the fire-place, feeling
that he had not a moment to lose. The children waited a long time; at
length, one and another became impatient, approached the house, and
laying their faces against the window-pane shouted in; but Oyvind
pretended not to hear them. Others came, and evening after evening
they lingered about outside, in great surprise; but Oyvind turned his
back to them and went on reading, striving faithfully to gather the
meaning of the words. Afterwards he heard that Marit was not there
either. He read with a diligence which even his father was forced to
say went too far. He became grave; his face, which had been so round
and soft, grew thinner and sharper, his eye more stern; he rarely sang,
and never played; the right time never seemed to come. When the
temptation to do so beset him, he felt as if some one whispered,
"later, later!" and always "later!" The children slid, shouted, and
laughed a while as of old, but when they failed to entice him out
either through his own love of coasting, or by shouting to him with
their f