Lavrans said softly, “Do not grieve any more for whatever you might regret toward me, Kristin. But remember it when your children are grown and you don’t think they behave toward you or their father in a way you consider reasonable. And remember too what I told you about my youth. You’re loyal in your love for them, that I know, but you’re most stubborn when you love most, and there is obstinacy in those boys of yours—that much I’ve seen,” he said with a little smile.
At last Lavrans said that she had to turn around and go back. “I don’t want you to walk alone any farther away from the buildings.” They had reached a hollow between small hills, with birch trees at the bottom and heaps of stones on the slopes.
Kristin threw herself against her father’s foot in the stirrup. She ran her fingers over his clothing and his hand and his saddle, and along the neck and flank of his horse; she pressed her head here and there, weeping and uttering such deep, pitiful moans that her father thought his heart would break to see her in such terrible sorrow.
He jumped down from his horse and took his daughter in his arms, holding her tight for the last time. Again and again he made the sign of the cross over her and gave her into the care of God and the saints. Finally he said that now she would have to let him go.
And so they parted. But after he had gone some distance, Kristin saw that her father reined in his horse, and she realized that he was weeping as he rode away from her.
She ran into the birch grove, raced through it, and began scrambling up the lichen-gold scree on the nearest hillside. But it was rocky and difficult to climb, and the little hill was higher than she thought. At last she reached the top, but by that time he had disappeared among the hills. She lay down on the moss and bearberries growing on the ridge, and there she stayed, sobbing, with her face buried in her arms.
Lavrans Bj?rgulfs?n arrived home at J?rundgaard late in the evening. A feeling of warmth passed through him when he saw that someone was still awake in the hearth room—there was a faint flicker of firelight behind the tiny glass window facing the gallery. It was in this building that he always felt most at home.
Ragnfrid was alone inside, sitting at the table with clothes to be mended in front of her. A tallow candle in a brass candlestick stood nearby. She got up at once, greeted him, put more wood on the hearth, and then went to get food and drink. No, she had sent the maids off to bed long ago; they had had a hard day, but now enough barley bread had been baked to last until Christmas. Paal and Gunstein had gone off into the mountains to gather moss. While they were talking about moss . . . Would Lavrans like to have for his winter surcoat the cloth that was dyed with moss or the one that was heather green? Orm of Moar had come to J?rundgaard that morning, wanting to buy some leather rope. She had taken the ropes hanging in the front of the shed and said he could have them as a gift. Yes, Orm’s daughter was a little better now; the injury to her leg had knit together nicely.
Lavrans answered her questions and nodded while he and his servant ate and drank. But he was quickly done with eating. He stood up, wiped his knife on the back of his thigh, and picked up a spool of thread that lay at Ragnfrid’s place. The thread had been wound around a stick with a bird carved into both ends—one of them had a slightly broken tail. Lavrans smoothed out the rough part and whittled it down so the bird had a stump of a tail. Once, long ago, he had made many of these thread spools for his wife.
“Are you going to mend them yourself?” he asked, looking down at her sewing. It was a pair of his leather hose; Ragnfrid was patching the inner side of the thighs, where they were worn from the saddle. “That’s hard work for your fingers, Ragnfrid.”
“Hmm.” His wife placed the pieces of the leather edge to edge and poked holes in them with an awl.
The servant bade them good night and left. The husband and wife were alone. Lavrans stood near the hearth, warming himself, with one foot up on the edge and his hand on the smoke-vent pole. Ragnfrid glanced over at him. Then she noticed that he wasn’t wearing the little ring with the rubies—his mother’s bridal ring. He saw that she had noticed.
“Yes, I gave it to Kristin,” he said. “I always meant it to be hers, and I thought she might as well have it now.”
Then one of them said to the other that they ought to go to bed. But Lavrans stayed where he was, and Ragnfrid sat and sewed. They exchanged a few words about Kristin’s journey, about the work that had to be done on the farm, about Ramborg and about Simon. Then they mentioned again that they should probably go to bed, but neither of them moved.