"Now! Let's look!" cried his father.
The son stops, and asks: "Marked him any?"
And they lay down together to look at the stone; look at the beast, the devil of a thing; no, not marked any as yet.
"I've a mind to try with the sledge alone," said the father, and stood up. Still harder work this, sheer force alone, the hammer grew hot, the steel crushed, the pen grew blunt.
"She'll be slipping the head," he said, and stopped. "And I'm no hand at this any more," he said.
Oh, but he never meant it; it was not his thought, that he was no hand at the work any more!
This father, this barge of a man, simple, full of patience and goodness, he would let his son strike the last few blows and cleave the stone. And there it lay, split in two.
"Ay, you've the trick of it," said the father. "H'm, yes …
Breidablik … might make something but of that place."
"Ay, should think so," said the son.
"Only the land was fairly ditched and turned."