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Gudrun had not ridden away with it. Brandur could hear the horseshoes crunching the hard, frozen ground as Gudrun rode off. He stood motionless for a long time, listening to the hoof beats. Then he went into the house. Brandur felt restless. He paced the floor awhile, stopped for a moment to raise to his lips the flask his daughter had brought him, and drained it at one gulp.
Brandur still tilled the land, though he kept but little help and was living chiefly on the fruits of his former labours. He had fine winter pastures, and good meadows quite near the house, from which the hay could easily be brought in. The old man steadfastly refused to adopt modern farming methods; he had never levelled off the hummocks, nor drained or irrigated the land.
The chest was heavy and was always kept locked. Only the nearest of kin had ever seen its contents. Brandur was not considered obliging; it was very difficult to get to see him. Yet he was willing to sell food at any time for cash; hay, too, as long as there was still some remaining in his lofts.
There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the highway could see that. Brandur usually had some hay remaining in lofts and yards when spring came, and, besides, there was the immense stack that stood on a knoll out in the homefield before the house.
Not a bird was to be seen, not even a snow bunting, only two ravens which kept flying from farmhouse to farmhouse, and even their cawing had a hungry note. When Jon rode up to the house at Holl, he found Brandur out by the haystack.
But he did hire a few harvest hands in the middle of the season, paying them in butter, tallow, and the flesh of sheep bellies. The wages he paid were never high, yet he always paid whatever had been agreed upon. Old Brandur had been blessed with only one child, a daughter named Gudrun. who had married a farmer in the district.
It's been a hard winter, the stock stall-fed for so long, at least sixteen weeks, on some farms twenty. Quite true, said Brandur. It's been a cold winter, and the end is not yet. The cold weather may not break up before the first of June, or even Midsummer Day.
The old man was carefully groping his way around the stack, feeling it on all sides and counting the strips of turf in so loud a voice that Jon could hear him: O-n-e, t-w-o, three. Jon dismounted and, going over to Brandur, saluted him with a kiss. How are you? God bless you, said Brandur. And who may this be? Jon of Bakki, replied the visitor. Gudrun sends greetings. Ah, yes. And how is my Gunna?
Do you side with him in this? asked Brandur, grasping his daughter by the arm. Do you, too, agree to his giving away the hay you need for your own flocks, giving it away until you haven't enough for yourselves? Do you, too, want to go to America, away from your father who now has one foot in the grave? Yes, I do, Gudrun replied. As a matter of fact, the plan was originally mine.
It had been there for many years and was well protected against wind and weather by a covering of sod. Brandur had replenished the hay, a little at a time, by using up that from one end only and filling in with fresh hay the following summer.
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