Independent People by Halldor Laxness

THE DAY before the round-up Bjartur decided to shave off his summer beard. That he despised this formality was evident, and while the operation lasted he swore most cruelly, but there was no escaping it, the festival of the sheep was at hand. There was another task, too, equally disagreeable, awaiting him that day. It was, apparendy, one of the symptoms of his wife's nerves that she was afraid to remain alone at home if Bjartur was away. There lay before him now three days' search of the mountain pastures, then, following immediately upon the distribution in the pens, the drive to town in company with the other farmers. Rosa had declared that she would not even hear of being left alone in the croft during this absence of her husband's. First she had asked him to leave her the dog behind, but when he had shown her that he would be as much use in a round-up without his right foot as without his dog, she refused to listen any longer to reason and said: "Very well, there's nothing else for it but to go over to Utirauthsmyri, rather than stay in this ghost-ridden hole. " Now, nothing was more distasteful to Bjartur than the thought of having to ask any boon of the people of Utirauthsmyri, and the result was that he offered to try to search put a yearling ewe of his, one of a little flock that he had seen grazing in the neighbourhood a few days beforehand. So he set off with the dog when he had finished shaving, found the lamb, caught it with the dog's help, and returning with it towards evening, tethered it on the outskirts of the home-field. The lamb was called Gullbra. The woman slept badly that night, for the animal bleated impatiently in the home-field, unable to understand the whims of mankind.

The shepherds cantered into the home-field with their dogs long before it was light. Bjartur, who was standing on the paving with his stockings pulled over his trouser bottoms, shook hands, his shoulders wriggling with pleasure, and paraded up and down in front of them, or in a circle about them while he asked them all in for coffee. Most of them wanted to inspect the building; some of the lads clumped up the ladder into the billowing smoke to see Rosa, and the dogs tried to follow, but the ladder was too steep for them and they fell back yelping.