The Road Leads On | Page 9

asked in return.--"And you so pretty and all," folk said. "If you're twenty you're never a day."--"No," Valborg answered, "but they began with me the year I was confirmed."
They begged a bit, did J?rn and Valborg, and they must have done a bit of stealing on the side, too, for a sharp eye was kept on them whenever they entered the shops in town.--"Well, what will you have today?" the shopkeepers would ask, jocosely.--"Have I no leave to come in?" J?rn would answer straight back. Whenever they would leave him in peace, it might be that J?rn would inquire the price of a bit of red and green dress material which had happened to catch his fancy, or to ask the cost of a pound of American bacon. But what good did it do to tell him what things were worth? the dealers might grumble. The fact was, he never bought anything, did he? "Have I no leave to ask?" J?rn would answer.
A wretched existence for J?rn and Valborg, but at least they had no children--no, unfortunately, they didn't have even a child to their name.
But children there were on the farms throughout the countryside, of these alone there were plenty, and they were no mean blessing. Without children there would be no laughter heard one year to the next, and without children no tiny groping hands and no droll questions to answer. Otherwise, poverty and desolation reigned over each rural home. When autumn came, folk might, of course, slaughter a bit of a sheep and, God be praised, there were still potatoes in the house and milk to be had from the byre, so it really wasn't so bad to be a farmer in a small way, with three or four kine and a horse in the barn and a few smaller creatures besides. But did they own these things? They were in debt for more than these and their entire farms were worth; they were deep in the books of the merchants in town, they were far behind in their taxes, they were living in tumble-down homes. And it would help little were they to offer a cow or a pair of sheep as a payment against those enormous debts of theirs, and whenever the fishing was lean at Lofoten, they only got in deeper. No, they had little enough to offer J?rn and Valborg when these beggars were making their rounds. And another result was, one poor soul would help out another with a half-sack of potatoes or a pail of milk. And thus folk took full pity one upon another and showed such a splendid spirit of mutual helpfulness as must have delighted the angels.
Honest, everyday people, these, content to be what they were. They lived according to the keen good sense of their forefathers, though they lived so close by the town with all its people of rank and quality and the new imported customs. No thank you, the people of the countryside still lived as they had once learned to live and slow they were to adopt such fancy new articles as white collars for the neck of a man and cut tobacco for an honest man's pipe.
Ay, the old ways, those are the best! Look there at those boat-sheds of theirs, those little sheds on stilts! Surely they differ in no particular from those which stood here eight centuries ago when Sverre ruled the land, though they still answer every practical purpose. The walls are open strips of birch and aspen, the roofs are of turf and birchbark. And if someone there is who imagines that these boathouse walls ought to be fitted tight against the weather, the reply is obvious that much would be lost thereby, since it is wind blowing in through the cracks which airs out the sails and the fishing gear left hanging there to dry. And observe those massive wooden locks on the doors of the sheds with their prehistoric wooden keys! No iron there, not a single thing which will rust. And when, at last, lock and key have become rotten, what a simple matter it will be to fit new ones at not a single penny's cost, with the expenditure of only a little time and some deftness of hand--an interesting evening's work for any ordinary man....
These people were industrious in their own way, too, though they were guided by no mad urge. They busied themselves with cutting the winter's fuel supply or with a bit of the usual home fishing, each at its proper season of the year. The children tended the flocks and performed whatever other simple tasks might arise; during the berry season, they would go out into the fields, often in foul weather when the autumn's cold bit deep, often absent the