[Subsection]

A stranger came down to the farmyard and met Per and Aunt Anne.

"Good day. Is this where the farmer lives?"

"Yes," replied Auntie without thinking twice about it. "He's down there on the meadow."

"I'd like to talk to him a little," said the man.

"All right, just go down to him."

The man went down to Father. He was a well-dressed man with a collar around his neck. Per stood thinking.

The farmer, the stranger had said, seriously and with approval. He had not smiled. The man had asked as if it were something important.

Per left Auntie and went down to Father and Ivar and the stranger. The farmer, the stranger had called Father. Per looked about him and saw that the meadows were large. And at the edge of the meadows there was always the cleared land, and it was never in the same place. It was here Father dug, saying nothing, simply digging so that Mother and Auntie said he was crazy---

He seemed to hear Father's rusty voice: Stay at Bufast to the end of your days.

All Per felt was anxiety and a weight on his breast. He looked at the meadows and growing crops. The meadow was almost mown. The fields were green, the shimmering heads of grain not yet bent over. Beyond lay the cleared land, black and red, with upturned stones and tree-stumps, looking as if something tremendously powerful had struck down there, tearing and goring.

Love earth, said Father.

Per stood still and tried to find out whether he had come to love earth.

No. He felt nothing as he looked at it; he simply saw it. He came down to Father. The stranger was standing with a book in his hand, writing in the book as hard as he could. He was writing down what Father was saying!

Father was asked about number of years, so-and-so many acres of cleared land, and many other questions that Per did not understand in the least. Father replied abruptly and almost unwillingly. He stood with his scythe ready, prepared to carry on mowing again, but let it go and answered. The questions came rapidly.

Up from the earth came Father's voice, as usual. You seemed to feel it under your feet.

Ivar went on mowing. Now and then he looked at the stranger crossly, ready to grumble. Ivar was like that: any delay in the work irritated him. When he was toiling and straining, everyone around him was expected to do the same.

But Father stood still. The stranger asked questions, and Father replied. His words were written down as if they were curiosities.

All of a sudden the stranger turned to Per. "And what about you?" he said.

Per gave a start of surprise and turned pale. He had a few things to feel guilty about: various small bits of mischief. But surely this man couldn't know about them?

The stranger asked, "Are you going to grow up like your father? You must try to, my boy."

Per did not reply. Stay at Bufast to the end of your days, he heard inside him. He looked anxiously at the two grownups. Grow up like Father? He did not know what kind of a man Father was. The stranger could shut up.

Then came the earthy voice: "Yes, I expect Per will stay at Bufast to the end of his days."

Per stepped back involuntarily.

The stranger said: "Yes, I expect you'll stay at Bufast to the end of your days."

Per stared at them in fear. They seemed to flow together into one giant force.

He felt as if a wall were being lowered around him. No, it was as if an enormous mouth had opened and said crushing words and then snapped shut, and would never open again. No, it wasn't like that either, but there were those big grown-ups standing there: Father in just his shirt and trousers and shoes, with his shirt hanging loose, and the stranger well-dressed and ironed like those other townsfolk who passed by, and with a collar around his neck as if he were going to a Christmas party in the middle of the haying. They stood there saying something that Per did not understand but which made him terribly anxious. Why couldn't they shut up? They floored him with mysterious threats that burned into him so that he seemed forced to become what they said.

He ran away from them.