sense, you call it, and out of my senses, and all? Ah, but not so
far as you'd like to think," says Oline. "Nay, 'tis not the Almighty's
will and decree I should come before the Throne and before the Lamb as
yet, with all I know of goings-on here at Maaneland. I'll be up and
about again, never fear; but you'd better be fetching a doctor, Axel,
'tis quicker that way. What about that cow you were going to give me?"

"Cow? What cow?"

"That cow you promised me. Was it Bordelin, maybe?"

"You're talking wild," says Axel.

"You know how you promised me a cow the day I saved your life."

"Nay, that I never knew."

At that Oline lifts up her head and looks at him. Grey and bald she
is, a head standing up on a long, scraggy neck--ugly as a witch, as an
ogress out of a story. And Axel starts at the sight, and fumbles with
a hand behind his back for the latch of the door.

"Ho," says Oline, "so you're that sort! Ay, well--say no more of it
now. I can live without the cow from this day forth, and never a word
I'll say nor breathe of it again. But well that you've shown what sort
and manner of man you are this day; I know it now. Ay, and I'll know
it another time."

But Oline, she died that night--some time in the night; anyway, she
was cold next morning when they came in.

Oline--an aged creature. Born and died....

'Twas no sorrow to Axel nor Barbro to bury her, and be quit of her for
ever; there was less to be on their guard against now, they could be
at rest. Barbro is having trouble with her teeth again; save for that,
all is well. But that everlasting woollen muffler over her face, and
shifting it aside every time there's a word to say--'twas plaguy and
troublesome enough, and all this toothache is something of a mystery
to Axel. He has noticed, certainly, that she chews her food in a
careful sort of way, but there's not a tooth missing in her head.

"Didn't you get new teeth?" he asks.

"Ay, so I did."

"And are they aching, too?"

"Ah, you with your nonsense!" says Barbro irritably, for all that Axel
has asked innocently enough. And in her bitterness she lets out what
is the matter. "You can see how 'tis with me, surely?"

How 'twas with her? Axel looks closer, and fancies she is stouter than
need be.

"Why, you can't be--'tis surely not another child again?" says he.

"Why, you know it is," says she.

Axel stares foolishly at her. Slow of thought as he is, he sits there
counting for a bit: one week,