But I had the impression that he meant to say something different, so I probed further. "Let me look. Well, it's not a deep scratch; you won't be here long then, will you?" "Nails grow slowly," he muttered. Then he strolled away whistling, and I set about chopping wood. A little later Solem returned across the farmyard with a cackling hen under his arm. He went to the kitchen window and called: "This the kind of hen you want me to kill?" "Yes," was the reply. Solem came back to the woodshed and asked me for the ax, as he wanted to behead a few hens. It was easy to see that he did everything on the farm; he was, hand and brain, indispensable. He laid the hen on a block and took aim, but it was not easy, for she twisted her head like a snake and would not lie still. She had stopped cackling now. "I can feel her heart jumping inside her," said Solem. Suddenly he saw his chance and struck. There lay the head; Solem still held the body, which jerked under his hand. The thing was done so quickly that the two sections of the bird were still one in my eyes; I could not grasp a separation so sudden and unbelievable, and it took my sight a second or two to overtake the event. Bewilderment was in the expression of this detached head, which looked as though it could not believe what had happened, and raised itself a little as if to show there was nothing the least bit wrong. Solem let the body go. It lay still for a moment, then kicked its legs, leaped to the ground and began to hop, the headless body reeling on one wing till it struck the wall and spattered blood in wide arcs before it fell at last. "I let her go too soon after all," said Solem. Then he went off to fetch another hen. XVIII I return to the mad idea of Solem's being discharged. This would, to be sure, have averted a certain disaster here at the farm: but who would fetch and carry then? Paul? But I've told you he just lounges all day in his room, and has been doing so lately more than ever; the guests never see him except through an unsuccessful maneuver on his part. One evening he came walking across the lawn. He must, in his disregard of time, have thought the guests had already retired, but we all sat outside in the mild darkness. When Paul saw us, he drew himself up and saluted as he passed; then, calling Solem to him, he said: "You mustn't cross the field again without letting me know. I was right there in my room, writing. The idea of Josephine carrying luggage!" Paul strode on. But even yet he felt he had not appeared important enough, so he turned round and asked: "Why didn't you take one of my cotters with you to act as porter?" "They wouldn't go," Solem replied. "They were busy lifting potatoes." "Wouldn't go?" "That's what Einar said." Paul thought this over. "What insolence! They'd better not go too far or I'll drive them off the place." Then the law awoke in the lawyer's bosom, and he asked: "Haven't they bought their land?"