Lady Aashild rose:
“We had as well put our hands to some work as sit here thus,” she said. “Like enough ’twould be vain for us to try to sleep.”
She fetched the butter-churn from the closet, then bore in some pans of milk, filled the churn and made ready to begin churning.
“Let me do it,” Kristin asked. “My back is younger.”
They worked without speaking; Kristin stood by the closet-door churning, while Aashild carded wool by the hearth. At last, when Kristin had emptied the churn and was kneading the butter, the girl asked of a sudden:
“Moster Aashild—are you never afraid of the day when you must stand before God’s judgment?”
Lady Aashild rose, and came and stood before Kristin in the light:
“It may be I shall find courage to ask Him that hath made me as I am, if He will have mercy on me in His own good time. For I have never begged for His mercy when I broke His commands. And never have I begged God or man to forgive me a farthing of the price I have paid here in this mountain hut.”
A little while after she said softly:
“Munan, my eldest son, was twenty years old. He was not such an one then, as I know he is now. They were not such ones then, my children—”