"Never you mind what happened, just get along with you, that's all. Here's a bite of food, and get along." "You don't happen to have an odd bit of leather anywhere, I could mend my shoe with?" "No I But I'll give you a bit of stick if you don't get out!" Now a Lapp will beg as humbly as could be, but say no to him, and he turns bad, and threatens. A pair of Lapps with two children came past the place; the children were sent up to the house to beg, and came back and said there was no one to be seen about the place. The four of them stood there a while talking in their own tongue, then the man went up to see. He went inside, and stayed. Then his wife went up, and the children after; all of them stood inside the doorway, talking Lapp. The man puts his head in the doorway and peeps through into the room; no one there either. The clock strikes the hour, and the whole family stand listening in wonder. Inger must have had some idea there were strangers about; she comes hurrying down the hillside, and seeing Lapps, strange Lapps into the bargain, asks them straight out what they are doing there. "What do you want in here? Couldn't you see there was no one at home?" "H'm ..." says the man. "Get out with you," says Inger again, "and go on your way." The Lapps move out slowly, unwillingly. "We were just listening to that clock of yours," says the man; "'tis a wonder to hear, that it is." "You haven't a bit of bread to spare?" says his wife. "Where do you come from?" asks Inger. "From the water over beyond. We've been walking all night." "And where are you going to now?" "Across the hills." Inger makes up some food for them; when she comes out with it, the woman starts begging again: a bit of stuff for a cap, a tuft of wool, a stump of cheese--anything. Inger has no time to waste, Isak and the children are in the hayfield. "Be off with you now," she says. The woman tries flattery. "We saw your place up here, and the cattle--a host of them, like the stars in the sky." "Ay, a wonder," says the man. "You haven't a pair of old shoes to give away to needy folk?" Inger shuts the door of the house and goes back to her work on the hillside. The man called after her--she pretended not to hear, and walked on unheeding. But she heard it well enough: "You don't want to buy any hares, maybe?" There was no mistaking what he had said. The Lapp himself might have spoken innocently enough; some one had told him, perhaps. Or he might have meant it ill. Be that as it may, Inger took it as a warning--a message of what was to come....