Grindhusen had aged, and was in no better case than I myself; he did not care to think of the gay times in our youth, when we had danced the whole night through. He it was that had once been as a red-haired wolf among the girls, but now he was thoroughly cowed by age and toil, and had not even a smile. If I had only had a drop of spirits with me it might have livened him up a little, but I had none.
In the old days he had been a stiff-necked fellow, obstinate as could be; now he was easy-going and stupid. “Ay, maybe so,” was his answer to everything. “Ay, you're right,” he would say. Not that he meant it; only that life had taught him to seek the easiest way. So life does with all of us, as the years go by—but it was an ill thing to see, meeting him so.
Ay, he got along somehow, he said, but he was not the man he used to be. He'd been troubled with gout of late, and pains in the chest as well. His pains in the chest were cardialgic. But it was none so bad as long as he'd the work here for Engineer Lassen. He knew the river right up, and worked here all spring and early summer in his hut. And as for clothes, he'd nothing to wear out save breeches and blouse all the year round. Had a bit of luck, though, last year, he said suddenly. Found a sheep with nobody to own it. Sheep in the forest? Up that way, he said, pointing. He'd had meat on Sundays half through the winter off that sheep. Then he'd his folks in America as good as any one else: children married there and well-to-do. They sent him a little to help the first year or so, but now they'd stopped; it was close on two years now since he'd heard from them at all. Eyah! well, that's how things were now with him and his wife. And getting old....
Grindhusen lapsed into thought.
A dull, rushing sound from the forest and the river, like millions of nothings flowing and flowing on. No birds here, no creatures hopping about, but if I turn up a stone, I may find some insect under it.
“Wonder what these tiny things live on?” I say.
“What tiny things?” says Grindhusen. “Those? That's only ants and things.”
“It's a sort of beetle,” I tell him. “Put one on the grass and roll a stone on top of it, and it'll live.”
Grindhusen answers: “Ay, maybe so,” but thinking never a word of what I've said, and I think the rest to myself; but put an ant there under the stone as well, and very soon there'll be no beetle left.
And the rush of the forest and river goes on: 'tis one eternity that speaks with another, and agrees. But in the storms and in thunder they are at war.