"I believe you are homesick for the forest," Ingmar said to him one afternoon as they sat on separate logs eating their sandwiches.
"God knows I am!" the old man burst forth. "I only wish I had never come back at all!"
"Why, what's gone wrong at home?"
"How can you ask! You must know as well as I that Hellgum has been raising the deuce around here."
Ingmar answered that, on the contrary, he had heard that Hellgum had become a big man.
"Yes, he has grown so big and strong that he's been able to upset the whole parish," Strong Ingmar sneered.
It seemed strange to Ingmar that the old man never evinced a particle of affection for any of his own kin. He cared for nobody and for nothing save the Ingmarssons and the Ingmar Farm. Therefore Ingmar felt that he must stand up for the son-in-law.
"I think his doctrine a good one," he said.
"Oh, you do, do you?" snapped the old man; and he gave him a withering look. "Do you think Big Ingmar would have thought so?"
Ingmar replied that his father would have upheld any one who worked for righteousness.