Wanderers | Page 9

case, and the bed for the
pipes besides.
As luck would have it, the priest came out on Monday morning, and

said to Grindhusen half jestingly:
"Your mate here and I have decided to have the well up on the hill, and
lay down a pipe-line to the house. What do you think of it? A mad
idea?"
Grindhusen thought it was a first-rate idea.
But when we came to talk it over, and went up all three to look at the
site of the well, Grindhusen began to suspect I'd had more to do with it
than I had said. We should have to lay the pipes deep down, he said, on
account of the frost....
"One metre thirty's plenty," I said.
... and that it would cost a great deal of money.
"Your mate here said about a couple of hundred Kroner in all,"
answered the priest.
Grindhusen had no idea of estimates at all, and could only say:
"Well, well, two hundred Kroner's a deal of money, anyway."
I said:
"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