, keeps on talking and asking
and will not go.

"Seeing as you've seen it yourself," says he at last, "I'm getting up
this stone here."

"Ho, going to get him up?"

"Ay."

"And couldn't I help a bit at all?" she asks.

Isak shakes his head. But it was a kindly thought, anyway, that she
would have helped him, and he can hardly be harsh in return.

"If you just wait the least bit of a while," says he, and runs home
for the hammers.

If he could only get the stone rough a bit, knocking off a flake or so
in the right spot, it would give the lever a better hold. Inger holds
the setting-hammer, and Isak strikes. Strikes, strikes. Ay, sure
enough, off goes a flake. "'Twas a good help," says Isak, "and thanks.
But don't trouble about food for me this bit of a while, I must get
this stone up first."

But Inger does not go. And to tell the truth, Isak is pleased enough
to have her there watching him at his work; 'tis a thing has always
pleased him, since their young days. And lo, he gets a fine purchase
now on the lever, and puts his weight into it--the stone moves! "He's
moving," says Inger.

"'Tis but your nonsense," says Isak.

"Nonsense, indeed! But it is!"

Got so far, then--and that was something. The stone was, so to speak,
converted now, was on his side; they were working together. Isak
hoists and heaves with his lever, and the stone moves, but no more. He
keeps at it a while, nothing more. All at once he understands that it
is not merely a question of weight, the dead pull of his body; no, the
fact is that he has no longer his old strength, he has lost the tough
agility that makes all the difference. Weight? An easy matter enough
to hang on with his weight and break an iron-shod pole. No, he was
weakening, that was it. And the patient man is filled with bitterness
at the thought--at least he might have been spared the shame of having
Inger here to see it!

Suddenly he drops the lever and grasps the sledge. A fury takes him,
he is minded to go at it violently now. And see, his cap still hangs
on one ear, robber-fashion, and now he steps mightily, threateningly,
round the stone, trying, as it were, to set himself in the proper
light; ho, he will leave that stone a ruin and a wreck of what it had
been. Why not? When a man is filled with mortal hatred of a stone,
it is a mere formality to crush it. And suppose the stone resists,
suppose it declines to be crushed? Why, let it try--and see which of
the two su