He can hear her
asking: "In Jesu name, say if there's life in you!" And asking him if
it is him lying there, and if he's lost his wits or no.
Always something of a jackal about Oline; sniffing and scenting out,
always on the spot where there was trouble; ay, she would nose it out.
And how could she ever have managed through life at all if it hadn't
been that same way? Axel's word had reached her, and for all her
seventy years she had crossed the field to come. Snowed up at
Sellanraa in the storm of the day before, and then on again to
Maaneland; not a soul on the place; fed the cattle, stood in the
doorway listening, milked the cows at milking-time, listening again;
what could it be?...
And then a cry comes down, and she nods; Axel, maybe, or maybe the
hill-folk, devils--anyway, something to sniff and scent and find--to
worm out the meaning of it all, the wisdom of the Almighty with the
dark and the forest in the hollow of His hand--and He would never harm
Oline, that was not worthy to unloose the latchet of His shoes.
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