“I’m not one that grief can drive away,” said he. “Did you think I would desert you because of your great compassion?” In that moment she understood his heart as never before. She knew that in peaceful and happy days she must rely on herself--which she was well able to do; but in sorrow and suffering and times of stress he would always be by her side--her stay and comfort. OLD HOUSES AND OLD PEOPLE I THE STONE HUTS WHEN Lieutenant Lagerlöf took over Mårbacka the buildings were mostly very old. Oldest, however, were the manservants’ hall and the sheep-cot, though the storehouse on stilts, which served as larder, the stable with the loft balcony, the bath-house, where they used to smoke bacon, and the kiln, where they malted grain, were no newcomers into the world. The servants’ hall and sheepfold were built of stones which had been picked up on the ground--large and small, round and flat. The walls were two ells in thickness, as if meant to withstand a siege. That style of building was not of last year or the year before, so that in the matter of age those two structures would certainly take precedence. The first permanent residents of Mårbacka must have come from some village where there were too many occupants in every cottage and not enough land under cultivation to yield bread-food for all. They were no doubt a young couple who wanted to set up a home, and saw no other way than to fare forth into the wilds as settlers. With an eye to the good pasturage below Åsberget, they took possession of the little huts formerly tenanted by the _säter_ lasses. But after a time they perhaps felt unsafe, for they had no neighbours within miles of them. Sometimes the bear paid a visit to the cattle-shed and they themselves received calls from rough gangs of charcoal-burners. Under such circumstances, naturally they would have put up a couple of stone huts--one for themselves and one for their animals. The building for the animals was the larger; it had no windows, only narrow openings with home-forged iron gratings, through which neither lynx nor bear could squeeze. The floor was just hard, trampled earth, but a partition of rough-hewn beams divided the hut into two rooms. Thus, the animals which do not thrive together could be kept apart. Horses and sheep, which are always friends, were on one side; cows and goats on the other. The stone hut they built for themselves had only one room, but it had a floor of hand-split boards, two windows, a fireplace, and a chimney. Along the wall opposite the windows, the settler had put up a large bed-cupboard to hold four wide beds--two lower and two upper--in each of which three persons could easily lie side by side. Under the windows was a bench, and before it a large deal table. At the far end of the room, opposite the entrance, was the fireplace.