a great strong creature armed with a
huge wooden ladle, heavy as a club. Oline was bruised already, and
bleeding, but still sullenly refusing to cry out. "So you're trying to
murder me _too_!"

"Ay, kill you," says Inger, striking again. "There! I'll see you dead
before I've done with you." She was certain of it now. Oline knew her
secret; nothing mattered now. "I'll spoil your beastly face."

"Beastly face?" gasps Oline. "Huh! Look to your own. With the Lord His
mark on it!"

Oline is hard, and will not give in; Inger is forced to give over
the blows that are exhausting her own strength. But she threatens
still--glares into the other's eyes and swears she has not finished
with her yet. "There's more to come, ay, more, more. Wait till I get a
knife. I'll show you!"

She gets on her feet again, and moves as if to look for a knife, a
table knife. But now her fury is past its worst, and she falls back on
curses and abuse. Oline heaves herself up to the bench again, her face
all blue and yellow, swollen and bleeding; she wipes the hair from
her forehead, straightens her kerchief, and spits; her mouth too is
bruised and swollen.

"You devil!" she says.

"You've been nosing about in the woods!" cries Inger. "That's what
you've been doing. You've found that little bit of a grave there.
Better if you'd dug one for yourself the same time."

"Ay, you wait," says Oline, her eyes glowing revengefully. "I'll say
no more--but you wait--there'll be no fine two-roomed house for you,
with musical clocks and all."

"You can't take it from me, anyway!"

"Ay, you wait. You'll see what Oline can do."

And so they keep on. Oline does not curse, and hardly raises her
voice; there is something almost gentle in her cold cruelty, but she
is bitterly dangerous. "Where's that bundle? I left it in the woods.
But you shall have it back--I'll not own your wool."

"Ho, you think I've stolen it, maybe."

"Ah, you know best what you've done."

So back and forth again about the wool. Inger offers to show the very
sheep it was cut from. Oline asks quietly, smoothly: "Ay, but who
knows where you got the first sheep to start with?"

Inger names the place and people where her first sheep were out to
keep with their lambs. "And you mind and care and look to what you're
saying," says she threateningly. "Guard your mouth, or you'll be
sorry."

"Ha ha ha!" laughs Oline softly. Oline is never at a loss, never to be
silenced. "My mouth, eh? A