once, and the new cowshed ready.
When it was done, and they had moved in, they took up the potatoes,
and after that there was the corn to get in. Life was the same as
ever.

But there were signs enough, great or small, that things were
different now at Maaneland. Barbro felt herself no more at home there
now than any other serving-maid; no more bound to the place. Axel
could see that his hold on her had loosened with the death of the
child. He had thought to himself so confidently: wait till the child
comes! But the child had come and gone. And at last Barbro even took
off the rings from her fingers, and wore neither.

"What's that mean?" he asked.

"What's it mean?" she said, tossing her head.

But it could hardly mean anything else than faithlessness and
desertion on her part.

And he had found the little body by the stream. Not that he had made
any search for it, to speak of; he knew pretty closely where it must
be, but he had left the matter idly as it was. Then chance willed it
so that he should not forget it altogether; birds began to hover above
the spot, shrieking grouse and crows, and then, later on, a pair of
eagles at a giddy height above. To begin with, only a single bird had
seen something buried there, and, being unable to keep a secret like a
human being, had shouted it abroad. Then Axel roused himself from his
apathy, and waited for an opportunity to steal out to the spot. He
found the thing under a heap of moss and twigs, kept down by flat
stones, and wrapped in a cloth, in a piece of rag. With a feeling of
curiosity and horror he drew the cloth a little aside--eyes closed,
dark hair, a boy, and the legs crossed--that was all he saw. The
cloth had been wet, but was drying now; the whole thing looked like a
half-wrung bundle of washing.

He could not leave it there in the light of day, and in his heart,
perhaps, he feared some ill to himself or to the place. He ran home
for a spade and dug the grave deeper; but, being so near the stream,
the water came in, and he had to shift it farther up the bank. As he
worked, his fear lest Barbro should come and find him disappeared; he
grew defiant and thoroughly bitter. Let her come, and he would make
her wrap up the body neatly and decently after her, stillborn or no!
He saw well enough all he had lost by the death of the child; how he
was faced now with the prospect of being left without help again on
the place--and that, moreover, with three times the st