I replied that I had meant nothing by it, and had no intention of stealing anything from him.
"Stealing, eh! What of it? I'm not afraid of you, and don't you go thinking I am! Look, here's what I've got in the bag," said the man, and began to rummage in it and to show me the contents: three pairs of new mittens, some sort of thick cloth for garments, a bag of barley, a side of bacon, sixteen rolls of tobacco, and a few large lumps of sugar candy. In the bottom of the bag was perhaps half a bushel of coffee beans.
No doubt it was all from the general stores, with the exception of a heap of broken crisp-bread, which might have been stolen elsewhere.
"So you've got crisp-bread after all," I said.
"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't talk like that," the man replied. "When I'm crossing the fjeld on foot, walking and walking, don't I need food to put in my belly? It's blasphemy to listen to you!"
Neatly and carefully he put everything back into the sack, each article in its turn. He took pains to build up the rolls of tobacco round the bacon, to protect the cloth from grease stains.
"You might buy this cloth from me," he said. "I'll
let you have it cheap. It's duffle. It only gets in my way."
"How much do you want for it?" I asked.
"There's enough for a whole suit of clothes, maybe more," he said to himself as he spread it out.
I said to the man: