"What's this you're lugging about with you? Heavy things?"
"Mind your own business!" was his instant retort, as he drew the sack
closer to him.
"I wasn't going to steal any of it; I'm no thief," I said, jesting again.
"I don't care what you are," he muttered.
The day wore on. Since I had a visitor, I had no desire to go to the
woods, but wanted to sit and talk to him and ask him questions. He was a
very ordinary man, of no great interest to the irons in my fire, with
dirty hands, uneducated and uninteresting in his speech; probably he had
stolen the things in his sack. Later I learned that he was quick in much
small knowledge that life had taught him. He complained that his heels
felt cold, and took off his boots. And no wonder he felt cold, for where
the heels of his stockings should have been there were only great holes.
He borrowed a knife to cut away the ragged edges, and then drew on the
stockings again back to front, so that the torn soles came over his
instep. When he had put on his boots again, he said, "There, now it's nice
and warm."
He did no harm. If he took down the saw and the ax from their hooks to
inspect them, he put them back again where he had found them. When he
examined the letters, trying perhaps to read the addresses, he did not let
them go carelessly, leaving them to swing back and forth, but held the
string so that it hung motionless. I had no reason to complain about him.
He had his midday meal with me, and when he had eaten, he said:
"Do you mind if I cut myself some pine twigs to sit on?"
He went out to cut off some soft pine, and we had to move Madame's straw
to make room for the man inside the hut. Then we lay on our twigs, burning
resin and talking.
He was still there in the afternoon, still lying down as though to
postpone the time of his leaving. When it began to grow dark, he went to
the low doorway and looked out at the weather. Then, turning his head
back, he asked:
"Do you think there'll be snow tonight?"
"You ask me questions and I ask you questions," I said, "but it looks like
snow; the smoke is blowing down."
It made him uneasy to think it might snow, and he said he had better leave
that night. Suddenly he flew into a rage. For as I lay there, I stretched,
so that my hand accidentally touched his sack again.
"You leave me alone!" he shouted, tearing the sack from my grasp. "Don't
you touch that sack, or I'll show you!"
I replied that I had meant nothing by it, and had no intention of stealing
anything from him.
"Stealing, eh! What of it? I'm not afraid of you, and don't you go
thinking I am! Look, here's what I've got in the bag," said the man, and
began to rummage in it and to show me the contents: three pairs of new
mittens, some sort of thick cloth for garments, a bag of barley, a side of
bacon, sixteen rolls of tobacco, and a few large lumps of sugar candy. In
the bottom of the bag was perhaps half a bushel of coffee beans.
No doubt it was all from the general stores, with the exception of a heap
of broken crisp-bread, which might have been stolen elsewhere.
"So you've got crisp-bread after all," I said.
"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't talk like that," the man
replied. "When I'm crossing the fjeld on foot, walking and walking, don't
I need food to put in my belly? It's blasphemy to listen to you!"
Neatly and carefully he put everything back into the sack, each article in
its turn. He took pains to build up the rolls of tobacco round the bacon,
to protect the cloth from grease stains.
"You might buy this cloth from me," he said. "I'll
let you have it cheap. It's duffle. It only gets in my way."
"How much do you want for it?" I asked.
"There's enough for a whole suit of clothes, maybe more," he said to
himself as he spread it out.