But now—things look black even for the potato crop.
Isak looked at the sky unnumbered times in the day. And the sky was blue. Many an evening it looked as if a shower were coming. Isak would go in and say, "Like as not we'll be getting that rain after all." And a couple of hours later all would be as hopeless as before.
The drought had lasted seven weeks now, and the heat was serious; the potatoes stood all the time in flower; flowering marvellously, unnaturally. The cornfields looked from a distance as if under snow. Where was it all to end? The almanac said nothing—almanacs nowadays were not what they used to be; an almanac now was no good at all. Now it looked like rain again, and Isak went in to Inger: "We'll have rain this night, God willing."
"Is it looking that way?"
"Ay. And the horse is shivering a bit, like they will."
Inger glanced towards the door and said, "Ay, you see, 'twill come right enough."
A few drops fell. Hours passed, they had their supper, and when Isak went out in the night to look, the sky was blue.
"Well, well," said Inger; "anyway, 'twill give the last bit of lichen another day to dry," said she to comfort him all she could.
Isak had been getting lichen, as much as he could, and had a fine lot, all of the best. It was good fodder, and he treated it as he would hay, covering it over with bark in the woods. There was only a little still left out, and now, when Inger spoke of it, he answered despairingly, as if it were all one, "I'll not take it in if it is dry."
"Isak, you don't mean it!" said Inger.