"Yes, they have that agriculturist to help them." The school-master turned unconcernedly toward the window: "You should have help,--you, too, Ole. You cannot walk much, and you know very little of the new ways of management." Ole: "I do not suppose there is any one who would help me." "Have you asked for it?" Ole is silent. The school-master: "I myself dealt just so with the Lord for a long time. 'You are not kind to me,' I said to Him. 'Have you prayed me to be so?' asked He. No; I had not done so. Then I prayed, and since then all has been truly well with me." Ole is silent; but now the school-master, too, is silent. Finally Ole says:-- "I have a grandchild; she knows what would please me before I am taken away, but she does not do it." The school-master smiles. "Possibly it would not please her?" Ole makes no reply. The school-master: "There are many things which trouble you; but as far as I can understand they all concern the gard." Ole says, quietly,-- "It has been handed down for many generations, and the soil is good. All that father after father has toiled for lies in it; but now it does not thrive. Nor do I know who shall drive in when I am driven out. It will not be one of the family." "Your granddaughter will preserve the family." "But how can he who takes her take the gard? That is what I want to know before I die. You have no time to lose, Baard, either for me or for the gard." They were both silent; at last the school-master says,-- "Shall we walk out and take a look at the gard in this fine weather?" "Yes; let us do so. I have work-people on the slope; they are gathering leaves, but they do not work except when I am watching them." He totters off after his large cap and staff, and says, meanwhile,-- "They do not seem to like to work for me; I cannot understand it." When they were once out and turning the corner of the house, he paused. "Just look here. No order: the wood flung about, the axe not even stuck in the block." He stooped with difficulty, picked up the axe, and drove it in fast. "Here you see a skin that has fallen down; but has any one hung it up again?" He did it himself. "And the store-house; do you think the ladder is carried away?" He set it aside. He paused, and looking at the school-master, said,-- "This is the way it is every single day." As they proceeded upward they heard a merry song from the slopes. "Why, they are singing over their work," said the school-master. "That is little Knut Ostistuen who is singing; he is helping his father gather leaves. Over yonder _my_ people are working; you will not find them singing." "That is not one of the parish songs, is it?" "No, it is not." "Oyvind Pladsen has been much in Ostistuen; perhaps that is one of the songs he has introduced into the parish, for there is always singing where he is." There was no reply to this.