Grindhusen works¹ away a couple of hours with his putty and paint, and soon one side of the little house, the north side, facing the sea, is done all gaily² in red. At the mid-day rest, I go out and join him, with something to drink, and we lie on the ground awhile, chatting and smoking.

“Painter? Not much of a one, and that’s the truth,” says he. “But if any one comes along and asks if I can paint a bit of a wall, why, of course I can. First-rate Br?ndevin this you’ve got.”

His wife and two children lived some four miles off, and he went home to them every Saturday. There were two daughters besides, both grown up, and one of them married. Grindhusen was a grandfather already. As soon as he’d done painting Gunhild’s cottage — two coats it was to have — he was going off to the vicarage to dig a well. There was always work of some sort to be had about the villages. And when winter set in, and the frost began to bind³, he would either take a turn of woodcutting in the forests or lie idle⁴ for a spell, till something else turned up. He’d no big family to look after now, and the morrow, no doubt, would look after itself just as today.

“If I could only manage it,” said Grindhusen, “I know what I’d do. I’d get myself some bricklayer’s tools.”

“So you’re a bricklayer, too?”

“Well, not much of a one, and that’s the truth. But when that well’s dug, why, it’ll need to be lined, that’s clear. . . . ”

I sauntered about the island as usual, thinking of this and that. Peace, peace, a heavenly peace comes to me in a voice of silence from every tree in the wood. And now, look you, there are but few of the small birds left; only some crows flying mutely⁵ from place to place and settling. And the clusters⁶ from the rowans drop with a sullen⁷ thud and bury themselves in the

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