dablik, and made a jest of that little ruse.
But when they came down in sight of the village, and it was time for
Sivert to turn homeward again, they both behaved in somewhat unmanly
fashion. Sivert, for instance, was weak enough to say: "I doubt it'll
be a bit lonely, maybe, when you're gone."

And at that Eleseus must fall to whistling, and looking to his shoes,
and finding a splinter in his finger, and searching after something in
his pockets; some papers, he said, couldn't make out ... Oh, 'twould
have gone ill with them if Sivert had not saved things at the last.
"Touch!" he cried suddenly, and touched his brother on the shoulder
and sprang away. It was better after that; they shouted a word of
farewell or so from a distance, and went each on his own way.

Fate or chance--whatever it might be. Eleseus went back, after all,
to the town, to a post that was no longer open for him, but that same
occasion led to Axel Stroem's getting a man to work for him.

They began work on the house the 21st of August, and ten days later
the place was roofed in. Oh, 'twas no great house to see, and nothing
much in the way of height; the best that could be said of it was that
it was a wooden house and no turf hut. But, at least, it meant that
the animals would have a splendid shelter for the winter in what had
been a house for human beings up to then.

Chapter II

On the 3rd of September Barbro was not to be found. 'Twas not that she
was altogether lost, but she was not up at the house.

Axel was doing carpenter's work the best he could; he was trying hard
to get a glass window and a door set in the new house, and it was
taking all his time to do it. But being long past noon, and no word
said about coming in to dinner, he went in himself into the hut. No
one there. He got himself some food, and looked about while he was
eating. All Barbro's clothes were hanging there; she must be out
somewhere, that was all. He went back to his work on the new building,
and kept at it for a while, then he looked in at the hut again--no,
nobody there. She must be lying down somewhere. He sets out to find
her.

"Barbro!" he calls. No. He looks all round the houses, goes across
to some bushes on the edge of his land, searches about a long while,
maybe an hour, calls out--no. He comes on her a long way off, lying on
the ground, hidden by some bushes; the stream flows by at her feet,
she is barefoot and bareheaded, and wet all up the back a