Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its fore
knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story the
Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they
feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.
One spring there moved to the next “eighty” a family that made a
great change in Canute’s life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the
time to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to
be afraid of any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their
pretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So it came about
that Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he
took it alone. After a while the report spread that he was going to
marry Yensen’s daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena
about the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could
quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute’s tactics of
courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to her
at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering on one side of
him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work. She
teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in his
coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even
smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful
and curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring
at her while she giggled and flirted with the other men.
Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She
came home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle
Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen’s dances, and all
the other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks
Lena’s head was completely turned, and she gave her father no rest
until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing
board. From the time she came home on her first visit she began to
treat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid
gloves, had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airs
and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood cordially
detest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town who
waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and she did not even
introduce him to Canute.
The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of them
down. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except that he
drank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than
ever. He lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt or
thought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena
in church one Sunday when she was there with the town man, said that
he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena’s life or the town
chap’s either; and Jim’s wheat was so wondrously worthless that the
statement was an exceedingly strong one.
Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like
the town man’s as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop;
for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for
it. He had hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had
never put them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly from
discouragement, and partly because there was something in his own
