“It will mean so much less in _Aabot_ when you move.”
The priest looked at me in surprise.
“_Aabot_? But I'm not thinking of leaving the place,” he said.
“Why, then, you'll have the full use of it. And may your reverence live
to enjoy it for many a year,” said I.
At this the priest stared at me, and asked:
“What is your name?”
“Knut Pedersen.”
“Where are you from?”
“From Nordland.”
But I understood why he had asked, and resolved not to talk in that
bookish way any more.
Anyhow, the well and the pipe-line were decided on, and we set to
work....
The days that followed were pleasant enough. I was not a little anxious
at first as to whether we should find water on the site, and I slept
badly for some nights. But once that fear was past, all that remained
was simple and straightforward work. There was water enough; after a
couple of days we had to bale it out with buckets every morning. It was
clay lower down, and our clothes were soon in a sorry state from the
work.
We dug for a week, and started the next getting out stones to line the
well. This was work we were both used to from the old days at Skreia.
Then we put in another week digging, and by that time we had carried
it deep enough. The bottom was soon so soft that we had to begin on the
stonework at once, lest the clay walls should cave in on top of us.
So week after week passed, with digging and mining and mason's work.
It was a big well, and made a nice job; the priest was pleased with it.
Grindhusen and I began to get on better together; and when he found that
I asked no more than a fair labourer's wage, though much of the work
was done under my directions, he was inclined to do something for me in
return, and took more care about his table manners. Altogether, I could
not have wished for a happier time; and nothing on earth should ever
persuade me to go back to town life again!
In the evenings I wandered about the woods, or in the churchyard reading
the inscriptions on the tombstones, and thinking of this and that. Also,
I was looking about for a nail from some corpse. I wanted a nail; it was
a fancy of mine, a little whim. I had found a nice piece of birch-root
that I wanted to carve to a pipe-bowl in the shape of a clenched fist;
the thumb was to act as a lid, and I wanted a nail to set in, to make it
specially lifelike. The ring finger was to have a little gold ring bent
round.
Thinking of such trifles kept my mind calm and at ease. There was no
hurry now for me about anything in life. I could dream as I pleased,
having nothing else to do; the evenings were my own. If possible, too,
I would see and arrive at some feeling of respect for the sacredness
of the church and terror of the dead; I had still a memory of that rich
mysticism from days now far, far behind, and wished I could have some
share in it again. Now, perhaps, when I found that nail, there would
come a voice from the tombs: “That is mine!” and I would drop the thing
in horror, and take to my heels and run.
“I wish that vane up there wouldn't creak so,” Grindhusen would say at
times.
“Are you afraid?”
“Well, not properly afraid; no. But it gives you a creeping feeling now
and then to think of all the corpses lying there so near.”
Happy man!
One day Harald showed me how to plant pine cones and little bushes. I'd
no idea of that sort of work before; we didn't learn it in the days when
I was at school. But now I'd seen the way of it, I went about planting
busily on Sundays; and, in return, I taught Harald one or two little
things that were new to him at his age, and got to be friends with him.