Well, Isak was not perhaps in the best of humour just then, not exactly gentle and content, no, for he had started work on that sawmill, and it was a slow and toilsome business; he couldn't hold the baulks with one hand, and a level in the other, and fix ends at the same time. But when the boys came back from school again it was easier; the lads were useful and a help, bless them! Sivert especially had a genius for knocking in nails, but Eleseus was better at handling a plumb-line. By the end of a week, Isak and the boys had actually got the foundation posts in, and soundly fixed with stretcher pieces as thick as the beams themselves. It worked out all right--everything worked out all right somehow. But Isak was beginning to feel tired in the evenings now--whatever it could be. It was not only building a sawmill and getting that done--there was everything else besides. The hay was in, but the corn was standing yet, soon it would have to be cut and stacked: there were the potatoes too, they would have to be taken up before long. But the boys were a wonderful help. He did not thank them; 'twas not the way among folk of their sort, but he was mightily pleased with them for all that. Now and again they would sit down in the middle of their work and talk together, the father almost asking his sons' advice as to what they should do next. Those were proud moments for the lads, they learned also to think well before they spoke, lest they should be in the wrong. "'Twould be a pity not to have the saw roofed in before the autumn rains," said their father. If only Inger had been as in the old days! But Inger was not so strong as she had been, it seemed, and that was natural enough after her long spell within walls. That her mind, too, seemed changed was another matter. Strange, how little thought, how little care, she seemed to take now; shallow and heedless--was this Inger? One day she spoke of the child she had killed. "And a fool I was to do it," she said. "We might have had her mouth sewed up too, and then I needn't have throttled her." And she never stole off now to a tiny grave in the forest, where once she had patted the earth with her hands and set up a little cross. But Inger was not altogether heartless yet; she cared for her other children, kept them clean and made new clothes for them; she would sit up late at night mending their things. It was her ambition to see them get on in the world. The corn was stacked, and the potatoes were taken up. Then came the winter. No, the sawmill did not get roofed in that autumn, but that could not be helped--after all, 'twas not a matter of life or death. Next summer would be time and means enough. Chapter XIII