You would not have seen them at all but for the reflection
of the sunlight upon the four panes of window-glass. And that was
all you saw. Not a shed, not a corral, not a well, not even a path
broken in the curly grass. But for the piece of rusty stovepipe
sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof
of Ivar's dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human
habitation. Ivar had lived for three years in the clay bank,
without defiling the face of nature any more than the coyote that
had lived there before him had done.
When the Bergsons drove over the hill, Ivar was sitting in the
doorway of his house, reading the Norwegian Bible. He was a queerly
shaped old man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs.
His shaggy white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddy
cheeks, made him look older than he was. He was barefoot, but
he wore a clean shirt of unbleached cotton, open at the neck. He
always put on a clean shirt when Sunday morning came round, though
he never went to church. He had a peculiar religion of his own
and could not get on with any of the denominations.
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