Try the lever again? He thrust it down where there was best hold--no. An altogether remarkable instance of obstinacy and defiance on the part of the stone. But it seemed to be giving. Isak tries again, with a touch of hope; the earth-breaker has a feeling now that the stone is no longer invincible. Then the lever slipped, throwing him to the ground. "Devil!" said he. Ay, he said that. His cap had got thrust down over one ear as he fell, making him look like a robber, like a Spaniard. He spat. Here comes Inger. "Isak, come in and have your food now," says she, kindly and pleasant as can be. "Ay," says he, but will have her no nearer, and wants no questions. Oh, but Inger, never dreaming, she comes nearer. "What's in your mind now?" she asks, to soften him with a hint of the way he thinks out some new grand thing almost every day. But Isak is sullen, terribly sullen and stern; he says: "Nay, I don't know." And Inger again, foolish that she is--ugh, 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!