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Updated: May 22, 2025
It's ever so far away from here." But now Grindhusen does not care to have my company farther; he stops, and thanks me for coming up so far. I might just as well go up to the farm with him, and I say so; but Grindhusen, it seems, is not going up to the farm at all he never did. And I'd just have an easy day back into town, starting now. So I turned and went back the way I had come.
He'd his own little holding, with keep for two cows and a pig; and a wife and children he had as well. But what were Grindhusen and I to turn our hands to now? I could go off wandering anywhere, but Grindhusen, good soul, was no wanderer. All he could do was to stay on at one place and work till he was dismissed.
It was a nice offer, and I thought about it for a while, but ended by saying no. I would rather wander about and be my own master, doing such work as I could find here and there, sleeping in the open, and finding a trifle to wonder at in myself. I had come across a man here in the potato fields that I might join company with when Grindhusen was gone.
Ho, yes, but they never troubled to think what it must cost, with machines for this and that, and a pack of men to every machine again. What mustn't it have cost, now, for Grindhusen and me that summer! And then himself this autumn. In the old days it had been music and plenty at Ovrebo, and some of us had been asked into the parlour to sing. "I'll say no more," said Lars.
"He sends up for me now and again, and when I get there, it's not for anything particular only wants to have a bit of a chat with me, that's all. Ay, a fine fellow is the engineer!" It is getting late. Grindhusen yawns again, creeps into the hut and lies down. Next morning we cleared the jam. "Come up with me my way a bit," says Grindhusen. And I went.
The Captain had not interfered in the arrangements, not with a single word, but left all to me, so that it was no light matter to me if the frost came now and upset it all. When I got back, there was the landau outside the house the horses had been taken out. Grindhusen would about have had time to get back, I thought; but why had he pulled up in front of the steps to the house?
He worked very cautiously, as if in terror of his life; he was even afraid of getting his feet wet. It amused me to watch him for a little. The least chance of being carried out into the stream on a loosened log was enough to make him shift at once. At last I went up close and looked at him why ... yes, it was my old friend, Grindhusen.
He could have driven himself, but he was going to fetch his wife, who was coming home from abroad, and he would have to take the landau in case it rained. Nils decided, then, that Grindhusen had better drive, he being the one who could best be spared. The rest of us went on with our field-work while they were away.
Well I remember that man's calm and fairness of mind; I stood looking after him as he walked away across the yard. Then he turned round and said: "Were you up in the woods yesterday? Is there snow enough for me to take a sledge up for wood?" "Yes," I answered. And he went off, relieved, to the stables, to harness up. Grindhusen, too, comes along, on the way to the stable.
This was to me, but before I could answer he turned to Nils. "I shall want the boy to drive me to the station," he said. "I'm going to Christiania." Grindhusen and I went off to our work on the reservoir, and Lars to his digging. But a shadow seemed to have fallen over us all. Grindhusen himself said openly: "Pity the Captain's going away." I thought so, too.
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