2

Per waited expectantly every Sunday: today Olav will come. He did not come. The precious Sundays were long and empty and worthless. Then he worked six more days and earned another Sunday.

It was impossible for him to go to Bringa. He could find no reason for this, except that he could not bring himself to do so.

"What's happened to Olav Bringa?" asked Mother. "We never see him nowadays."

It was just such a long Sunday, empty and with a heat haze in the air. He could feel the six days of hard work in his body.

Per did not answer his mother. How innocently she asked, "Have you quarrelled?"

"No."

He left her. Ivar was lying out in the yard. In the field stood the poles for drying the sheaves of grain. The stalks were   [p. 127]   only half their usual length. But the little grain there was, was firm and rounded. The flour would be good this year. Rain had fallen at last, turning the scorched meadows green, and there was water in the well.

Ivar took no more notice of him this year than last, and Per did not care; he had no need of him. There he lay yawning. He was a hard worker and seemed quite lost on Sundays.

Olav did not come that Sunday either.

Judgment hung over the herd. Towards autumn Skrim began going the rounds of the district buying up the cows that could not be kept through the winter. He hastened from barn to barn like a pestilence.

There were cows for the asking everywhere. He came to Bufast and took three. He did not take them away at once, but simply marked them with an invisible mark, writing them down in a worn notebook. It was a sad day. There stood Father, selling cows. It was done quickly. Father wanted to get it over with. "Oh, yes," he said, fed up and dejected, in answer to Skrim's talk.

Skrim in his haste noted Per too: "I shall need drovers when I go to town. Will you take the job? Come with the herd in about a week?"

Yes, yes! thought Per, looking at his father.

"As you please," said Father to Per, fed up with the whole thing.

So Per said he would, and Skrim promised to send for him later.

Skrim went on to other barns. Nobody could avoid him. He was like the plague. It was not he, Skrim; it was the pitiless drought summer that was behind him. He was only a part of it.

Father stood with the money in his hands. The price had been low. In a year's time, when rain had fallen and there was grass again, he would have to buy cows. Then he would probably have to give twice the price.

In a year's time there would be rain and grass once more. The conviction was there. In the middle of this burning   [p. 128]   drought was the certainty that the meadows and fields would be bountiful from the rain and bear fullfold. Their spirit would not be broken.