United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She showed me the two places on this side of the water, close to the shore, and I proceeded thither. A large house, with and upper story of planks built on later, displayed a new signboard on the wall: Room and Board. The barn, as usual, was a peat hut. As I did not know which was Eilert and which Olaus, and had stopped to consider which road to take, a man came hurrying toward me.
This was all that I could learn for several days; for though there were Gipsies or "Egypcians" in Egypt, I had almost as much trouble to find them as Eilert Sundt had to discover their brethren in Norway.
They themselves had seen him many a time, and once they had driven him, thwart by thwart, out of the boat where he had sat one morning, and turned the oars upside down. When Eilert hastened homewards in the darkness round the headland, along the strand, over heaps of seaweed, he dare scarcely look around him, and many a time the sweat absolutely streamed from his forehead.
Eilert was going out in his boat to fish haddock, and I went with him. Actually he should have been getting some meat for us; but he had promised the gentry from the city some fish, and fish was one of the gifts of God. Besides, if he lacked meat, he could always slaughter one of the pigs. There was a slight wind; but then we wanted some wind, Eilert said, as long as there was not too much of it.
But instead of that he said, "You had a rough time of it last night, Eilert, my boy, but it wouldn't have gone so hard with you if you hadn't streaked the lines with corpse-mould, and refused to take my daughter to church" here he suddenly broke off, as if he had said too much, and to prevent himself from completing the sentence, he put the brandy-keg to his mouth once more.
He also heard tell of something beyond all question, and that was the shame of having Finn blood in one's veins, which also was the reason why the Finns were not as good as other honest folk, so that the magistrates gave them their own distinct burial-ground in the churchyard, and their own separate "Finn-pens" in church. Eilert had seen this with his own eyes in the church at Berg.
Great changes here; the motor traffic in Stordalen must have completely altered all the other traffic since my last visit ten months ago. "Where can I stop for a few days?" I asked. "At the trading center, the other side of the islands. Or there's Eilert and Olaus; they're both on this side. You could go there; they've got big houses."
Eilert bothered his head a good deal over all this; it almost seemed to him as if he had had a share in the deed, because he was on such a good footing with the Finn folks. On the following Sunday both he and the Finn folks were at Berg church, and he secretly abstracted a handful of mould from one of the Finn graves, and put it in his pocket.
As we stood there, a rather stout girl came down from the loft and addressed the actor: "The missis wants you to come right upstairs." "Oh? Very well, at once.... Well, see you later. You'll be stopping here, too, I expect?" He hurried up the stairs. Eilert and I followed to my room. As a matter of fact, I went out again with Eilert at once.
It seemed to Eilert as if an icy cold shudder ran through his body when he took the hand which helped him ashore; but it was only for the moment, and he forgot it instantly. In the midst of the island there was an opening with a brazen flight of steps leading down to a splendid cabin.
Word Of The Day