He never had any true feeling that he belonged to the house, though he was happier here than where he came from. As far as he could, he left off thinking of his first home, Hestviken; but now and then memories of that time came up in him. And it caught him with a clutch of despondency when he called to mind all the old folks there.—The serving-men were worn out with age, and his great-grandfather was ever plaguing his mad old son, whom folk called Foulbeard—he had to be fed like a child and kept away from fire and water and edged tools. Olav had mostly been left to fend for himself. But he had never known any other ways, and the filth and evil stench that followed Foulbeard had been part of the life of the place as far back as the boy could remember, and he had also grown so used to the madman’s fits of howling and shrieking that they frightened him not so much. But he shrank from these memories.—Sometimes in his last years his great-grandfather had taken him to church with him, and there he had had a sight of strangers, women and children too; but he never had a thought that he might mix with them or talk with them; they seemed to be a part of the mass. And for many years after he had come to Frettastein it might chance that he would have a sudden feeling of loneliness—as though his life here with these people were unreal or not an everyday thing, like a church Sunday, and he were only waiting to go away, back to the life from which he had come. This was never more than a flash of memory that came and vanished again at once—but he never came to feel wholly rooted at Frettastein, though he had no longing for another home.

But at times memories of another kind arose, which stabbed his heart with a sharp longing. Like the return of an old dream he remembered a bare outcrop of rock in the midst of the yard at Hestviken; there were cracks in the warm rock and he had lain there picking out moss with a splinter of bone. Pictures floated before his eyes of places where he had once wandered alone, filling them with his own fancies, and these memories brought an aftertaste of unutterable sweetness. Behind the cowsheds in the yard, there was a lofty cliff of smooth, dark rock over which water trickled, and in the swampy hollow between the cliff and the outhouses it was always dark and shady, with a growth of tall green rushes.—And there was somewhere a stretch of beach where he trod on seaweed and rattling pebbles, and found snail-shells and bits of rotten wood, water-worn and green with slime. Outside, the water lay glittering into the far distance, and the old house-carl, Koll, used to open mussels and give them to him—Olav’s mouth watered when he recalled the fine taste of sea-water and the rich yellow morsel that he sopped up from the open blue shell.

When such memories glimmered within him he grew silent and answered absently if Ingunn spoke to him. But it never came into his head to go away and leave her. He never had a thought of parting company with her, when she came and wanted to be with him, any more than he thought he could part from himself. Thus it was with Olav Audunsson: it seemed his very destiny that he should always be with Ingunn. It was the only sure thing in his life, that he and Ingunn were inseparably joined together. He seldom thought of that evening when they had been betrothed—and it was now many years since any had spoken of the children’s affiancing. But amid all his thoughts and feelings it was as firm ground under his feet—that he should always live with Ingunn. The boy had no kinsmen to rely on; he knew that Hestviken was now his own, but with every year that went by, his images of the place grew fainter and fainter—it was but fragments of a dream he remembered. When he thought that one day he would go to live there, the fixed and real part of his thought was that he should take Ingunn with him—together they would face the uncertain future.

He never thought whether she was fair or not. Tora was fair, it seemed to him, perhaps because he had heard it said so often. Ingunn was only Ingunn, near at hand and everyday and always at his side; he never thought of how she might be, otherwise than as one thinks of the weather; that has to be taken as it comes. He grew angry and scolded her when she was contrary or troublesome—he had beaten her too, when they were smaller. When she was kind and fair-spoken with him and the other boys, their playmates, he felt happy as in fine weather. And mostly they were good friends, like brother and sister who get on well together—at whiles they might be angry and quarrel, but neither thought the other’s nature could be changed from what it was.

And among the band of children at Frettastein, of whom none took any heed, these two, the eldest, kept together, because they knew that, whatever happened, one thing was certain—that they should be together. This was the only sure thing, and it was good to have something sure. The boy, growing up alone in the home of a stranker kin, struck root, without knowing it, in her who was promised to him; and his love for the only one he well knew of all that was to be his grew as he himself grew—without his marking the growth. He cherished her as a habit, until his love took on a colour and brightness that showed him how wholly he was filled thereby.

Things went on this wise until the summer when Olav Audunsson had ended his sixteenth year. Ingunn was now fifteen winters old.

1 The period preceding that of this story (that is, the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries) had been one of anarchy in Norway. Harald Gille (or Gilchrist; he came of Norse stock in Ireland) reigned 1130–6.