“Wait just a minute. I'll be down again directly.”
And Grindhusen sets himself down on the beach to wait. He knows I've some of that first-rate Brændevin still left.
IV
We came to the vicarage on a Saturday. After much doubting, Grindhusen had at last agreed to take me as his mate. I had bought provisions and some working clothes, and stood there now, in blouse and high boots, ready to start work. I was free and unknown; I learned to walk with a long, slouching stride, and for the look of a laboring man, I had that already both in face and hands. We were to put up at the vicarage itself, and cook our food in the brew-house across the yard.
And so we started on our digging.
I did my share of the work, and Grindhusen had no fault to find with me as a work-mate. “You'll turn out a first-rate hand at this, after all,” he said.
Then after we'd been working a bit, the priest came out to look, and we took off our hats. He was an oldish man, quiet and gentle in his ways and speech; tiny wrinkles spread out fanwise from the corners of his eyes, like the traces of a thousand kindly smiles. He was sorry to interrupt, and hoped we wouldn't mind—but they'd so much trouble every year with the fowls slipping through into the garden. Could we leave the well just for a little, and come round and look at the garden wall? There was one place in particular....
Grindhusen answered: surely; we'd manage that for him all right.