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Updated: August 24, 2024
And looking, they saw a big farmstead high up on a sunny hill-slope, close under the crest, and near by a long low house with a steep slate roof, the sort of place where the district officers used to live in old days. "Is that the house we are to live in?" she asked again. "Ay, that's it, right enough," said old Raastad, and chirruped to his horses. The woman looked long at the farm and sighed.
"And there's a swallow's nest under the eaves too." "Oh, yes, we'll have great fun at Raastad just you wait and see." Soon Merle and Peer too lay in their strange beds, looking out at the luminous summer night. They were shipwrecked people washed ashore here. But it was not so clear that they were saved. Peer turned restlessly from side to side.
The child had grown a great deal since they came to Raastad; she lay now with her nose buried in the pillow and the fair hair hiding her cheek. She slept so soundly and securely. This was home to her still; she was safer with father and mother than anywhere else in the world. "Louise," said Merle, shaking her. "Time to get up, dear."
But the auction at Loreng went on for several days. Once more a deep valley, with sun-steeped farms on the hillsides between the river and the mountain-range behind. One day about midsummer it was old Raastad himself that came down to meet the train, driving a spring-cart, with a waggon following behind. Was he expecting visitors? the people at the station asked him.
Many a time she rose in the morning without having closed her eyes all night. But there were the children to look after, the house to see to, and she had made up her mind to get on without a maid if she possibly could. "What has taken you over to the farm so much lately?" she asked one day. "You have been sitting over there with old Raastad for hours together."
But when he had gone, she sat still, watching the sun sink behind the snow-ranges, till her eyes grew dim and her breath came heavily. A week later, when the sun was flaming on the white roofs, the grey pony dragged a huge packing-case up to Raastad. And the same day a noise of hammer and file at work was heard in the smithy. What do a few sleepless nights matter now?
The man and his wife sat in the spring-cart, the woman with a child in her lap, but a boy and a girl were seated on the load in the baggage-waggon behind Raastad. "Can we see the farm from here?" asked the woman, turning her head. "There," said the old man, pointing.
"Ay, that's me," said the old man. The stranger looked up at the great mountains to the north, rising dizzily into the sky. "The air ought to be good here," said he. "Ay, the air's good enough, by all accounts," said Raastad, and began loading up the carts. They drove off up the hill road.
Magnificent scenery, certainly. And this beautiful valley was where his sister had been living for more than a year. Splendid air and yet somehow it didn't seem to have done his brother-in-law much good. Well, well! And the neatly dressed young gentleman set off on foot towards Raastad, asking his way from time to time. He wanted to take them by surprise.
Down on the grassy slope below stands a tumble-down grey barn; it reminds him of an old worn-out horse, lifting its head from grazing to gaze at you a lonely forsaken creature it seems to-morrow it will sink to the ground and rise no more yet IT takes its lot calmly and patiently. Ugh! how far he has got from Raastad.
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