My children?
No, God be praised, they're—not—yours, said Groa, allowing the blows to rain on Arni.—But now I'll keep the skin for you.—And like an arrow she shot out of the door, all out of breath and trembling.
For a few seconds Arni stood still. His eyes seemed bursting out of their sockets, and the hair in his beard stood on end. In a flash he rushed over the kitchen floor and out of the house.
Groa had just taken the skin down off the nail on the wall. Now she brandished it and looked at Arni with fury in her gaze. But he did not wait. He rushed at her, gave her such a shove that she fell, and, snatching the skin from her, ran. A safe distance away, he turned and stood panting for several seconds. At last, exhausted and trembling with rage, he hissed:
I tell you, Groa. I'll have my way about this. The skin is the only thing that is all my own, and no one shall take it from me.
Arni fled then. He took to his heels, and ran away as fast as he could up the slopes.
—-
Far in the innermost corner of the outlying sheepcote at Bali, to which the sun's rays never reach, Arni built himself a little cupboard. This cupboard is kept carefully locked, and Arni carries the key on a string which hangs around his neck. Arni now has become quite prosperous. For a long time it was thought that he must keep money in the cupboard, but last spring an acquaintance of his stopped at the outlying sheepcote on his way from the village. The man had some liquor with him and gave Arni a taste. At last the visitor was allowed to see what the cupboard contained—a carefully combed and smoothed dark brown fox skin. Arni was visibly moved by the unveiling of his secret. Staring at the ceiling, he licked his whiskers and sighed deeply.
It seems to me, Gisli, he said to his friend, that I'd rather lose all my ewes than this skin, for it was the thing which once made me say, 'Thus far and no farther!' And since then I seem to own something right here in my breast which not even Jon of Lon can take away from me. I think I am now beginning to understand what is meant in the Scriptures by 'the treasure which neither moth nor rust can currupt.'
Arni's red-rimmed eyes were moist. For a while he stood there thinking. But all of a sudden he shook his head and, turning to his acquaintance, said: Let's see the bottle. A man seems to feel warmer inside if he gets a little drop.—And Arni shook himself as if the mental strain of his philosophizing had occasioned in him a slight chill.