Lasse himself was undismayed.
“As it is, it needs two to hold the plough. Karna is very strong, but even so it’s as though one’s arms would be torn from one’s body every time the plough strikes. And most of it has to be broken up with pick and drill—and now and again it takes a bit of a sneeze. I use dynamite; it’s more powerful than powder, and it bites down into the ground better,” he said proudly.
“How much is under cultivation here?” asked Pelle.
“With meadow and garden, almost fourteen acres; but it will be more before the year is out.”
“And two families have been ruined already by those fourteen acres,” said Karna, who had come out to call them in to dinner.
“Yes, yes; God be merciful to them—and now we get the fruit of their labors! The parish won’t take the farm away again—not from us,” he said. Lasse spoke in a tone full of self-reliance. Pelle had never seen him stand so upright.
“I can never feel quite easy about it,” said Karna; “it’s as though one were ploughing up churchyard soil. The first who was turned out by the parish hanged himself, so they say.”
“Yes, he had a hut on the heath there—where you see the elder-trees —but it’s fallen to pieces since then. I’m so glad it didn’t happen in the house.” Lasse shuddered uncomfortably. “People say he haunts the place when any misfortune is in store for those that come after him.”
“Then the house was built later?” asked Pelle, astonished, for it had such a tumble-down appearance.
“Yes, my predecessor built that. He got the land from the parish free for twenty years, provided he built a house and tilled a tonde of land a year. Those were not such bad conditions. Only he took in too much at a time; he was one of those people who rake away fiercely all the morning and have tired themselves out before midday. But he built the house well”—and Lasse kicked the thin mud-daubed wall—“and the timber-work is good. I think I shall break a lot of stone when the winter comes; the stone must be got out of the way, and it isn’t so bad to earn a few hundred kroner. And in two or three years we will make the old house into a barn and build ourselves a new house—eh, Karna? With a cellar underneath and high steps outside, like they have at Stone Farm. It could be of unhewn granite, and I can manage the walls myself.”