[Subsection]

That year was a drought year. The drought summer, they said for years afterwards.

Per minded the sheep no longer. A poor little wretch from the neighboring parish came and did it, a boy called Knut, who was so poorly clothed when he came that Mother immediately found more suitable rags for him to put on. Knut Prikken was his name. The farm he came from was not really called Prikken,^[1*] but was so small that it was known as such all the same. Knut was ten years old and was to mind the sheep with Åsmund. Åsmund was to be made use of too now. Bufast had seized him.

Not a single question was asked as to what Åsmund himself thought about it. He was just to be with Knut Prikken. The two boys were simply awakened in the morning and given food, and then off to the woods they went. They were as if dead and gone for many hours. But they returned the minute they were allowed home. They had a watch. They came shouting and leaping, swept the sheep behind the fences, ate, and were gone from sight, off to more important affairs of their own behind the house or down by the river or up in the gravel pits. Then it was noon, and the sheep bells jingled again on their way to the wood, to the long, long afternoon of herding.

Per saw and heard them from the cleared land or from some other work place out in the meadow or among the crops. He was the farm hand at Bufast now. He could not deny that he liked it better, even though the work was harder. He would not have changed places with the two shepherds.

This year as every year Father had a patch he was going to convert from wasteland to cultivated ground. Per dug there with him. It was exhausting. The new patch had been there as long as anyone could remember, so that you no longer saw   [p. 123]   it. It simply moved a bit, and you dug and dug. Thin soil that had never seen the sunlight was turned up with great effort. The sun came pouring down. Then the earth was fragrant for the first time.