A curious piece of news awaited me: Falkenberg had taken service with
the Captain as a farm-hand.
This upset the plan we had agreed on, and left me alone once more. I
could not understand a word of it all. Anyhow, I could think it over
tomorrow.... By two in the morning I was still lying awake, shivering
and thinking. All those hours I could not get warm; then at last it
turned hot, and I lay there in full fever.... How frightened she had
been yesterday--dared not sit down to eat with me by the roadside, and
never opened her eyes to me once through all the journey....
Coming to my senses for a moment, it occurs to me I might wake
Falkenberg with my tossing about, and perhaps say things in my delirium.
That would never do. I clench my teeth and jump up, get into my clothes
again, scramble down the stairs, and set out over the fields at a run.
After a little my clothes begin to warm me; I make towards the woods,
towards the spot where we had been working; sweat and rain pour down my
face. If only I can find the saw and work the fever out of my body--'tis
an old and tried cure of mine, that. The saw is nowhere to be seen, but
I come upon the ax I had left there Saturday evening, and set to work
with that. It is almost too dark to see at all, but I feel at the cut
now and then with my hands, and bring down several trees. The sweat
pours off me now.
Then, feeling exhausted enough, I hide the ax in its old place; it is
getting light now, and I set off at a run for home.
“Where have you been?” asks Falkenberg.
Now, I do not want him to know about my having taken cold the day
before, and perhaps go making talk of it in the kitchen; I simply mutter
something about not knowing quite where I have been.
“You've been up to see Rønnaug, I bet,” he said.