owing their heads--what for? Waiting for the end? And man,
what of man standing in the wilds with bowed head, waiting, when the
thunder came? Waiting for what?

The spring--ay, with its haste and joy and madcap delight; but the
autumn! It called up a fear of darkness, drove one to an evening
prayer; there were visions about, and warnings on the air. Folks might
go out one day in autumn seeking for something--the man for a piece
of timber to his work, the woman after cattle that ran wild now after
mushroom growths: they would come home with many secrets in their
mind. Did they tread unexpectedly upon an ant, crushing its hind part
fast to the path, so the fore part could not free itself again? Or
step too near a white grouse nest, putting up a fluttering hissing
mother to dash against them? Even the big cow-mushrooms are not
altogether meaningless; not a mere white emptiness in the eye. The big
mushroom does not flower, it does not move, but there is something
overturning in the look of it; it is a monster, a thing like a lung
standing there alive and naked--a lung without a body.

Inger grew despondent at last, the wilds oppressed her, she turned
religious. How could she help it? No one can help it in the wilds;
life there is not all earthly toil and worldliness; there is piety and
the fear of death and rich superstition. Inger, maybe, felt that she
had more reason than others to fear the judgment of Heaven, and it
would not pass her by; she knew how God walked about in the evening
time looking out over all His wilderness with fabulous eyes; ay, He
would find her. There was not so much in her daily life wherein she
could improve; true, she might bury her gold ring deep in the bottom
of a clothes chest, and she could write to Eleseus and tell him to
be converted too; after that, there was nothing more she could find
beyond doing her work well and not sparing herself. Ay, one thing
more; she could dress in humble things, only fastening a blue ribbon
at her neck of Sundays. False, unnecessary poverty--but it was the
expression of a kind of philosophy, self-humiliation, stoicism. The
blue ribbon was not new; it had been cut from a cap little Leopoldine
had grown out of; it was faded here and there, and, to tell the truth,
a little dirty--Inger wore it now as a piece of modest finery on holy
days. Ay, it may be that she went beyond reason, feigning to be poor,
striving falsely to imitate the wretched who live in hovels; but