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Updated: May 22, 2025
Grindhusen was having a drinking-bout in town, and I was going to do his beat as well as my own. That would take me right up to the top of the hills, and I had packed a double stock of food accordingly. The engineer was evidently coming down from a party somewhere; he was laughing and talking loudly with a couple of other men, all of them more or less drunk.
He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are.
We set up a new post, and took pains to get it straight and upstanding as a candle in a stick. And by the way of thanks we hooded the top with zinc. While I was at work on the hood, I got Grindhusen to suggest that the post should be painted red; he had still a trifle of red paint left over from the work at Gunhild's cottage.
As for the masonry work, we could break out our stone on the site itself; there was layer on layer of granite there. By noon next day we were hard at work, Lars Falkenberg digging the trench for the pipe-line, Grindhusen and I getting stone. We were both well used to this work from the days when we had been road-making together at Skreia. Well and good. We worked four days; then it was Sunday.
The Captain was still away on duty when I arrived; he would be back in a week. As it was, Grindhusen was very well received; Nils was quite pleased to find I had brought my mate along, and refused to let me keep him to help with the painting, but sent him off on his own responsibility to work in the turnip and potato fields.
It was late now; I went down to the parlour for a bit, and there was Grindhusen drinking with some of the gang. "There he is!" said one of them, as I came in. It was Henrik who spoke; he was trying to get his mates against me. Grindhusen, too, sided with the rest of them, and tried all he could to annoy me. Poor Grindhusen! He was stale-drunk all the time now, and couldn't get clear of it.
"When Captain comes, eh?" "You might get work here for the winter," I said. "A thousand dozen battens means a lot of small stuff left over that you could saw up for a reasonable wage." "Well, talk to the Captain about it," he said. And the hope of regular work for the winter made this man a contented soul. He could manage well enough. No, Grindhusen had nothing much to trouble about.
And lest he should turn suspicious, I threw all the blame on the priest, saying it was his idea, but that I had backed him up. Grindhusen had no objection; he saw at once it meant more work for us since we should have the well to dig in any case, and the bed for the pipes besides.
Decent work and good food soon set him up again, and in a few days he was happy and waxing fat. His one anxiety was lest the Captain should turn him off when he came home. But no such thing Grindhusen was allowed to stay. The Captain arrived. I was giving the barn its second coat; at the sound of his voice I came down from the ladder. He bade me welcome.
I knew all about it days ago, but I never said a word. I don't mind saying I knew about it before any other single soul in the world of us here, but did I ever breathe a word of it? Inspector he says to me: 'I want to ask you something, Grindhusen, says he, 'and that is, if you'll come down and work in the town instead of the man I've got there now. I want to get rid of him, says he.
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