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. Arni was visibly moved by the unveiling of his secret. Staring at the ceiling, he licked his whiskers and sighed deeply.
It seems to me, Gisli, he said to his friend, that I'd rather lose all my ewes than this skin, for it was the thing which once made me say, 'Thus far and no farther!' And since then I seem to own something right here in my breast which not even Jon of Lon can take away from me. I think I am now beginning to understand what is meant in the Scriptures by 'the treasure which neither moth nor rust can currupt.'
Arni's red-rimmed eyes were moist. For a while he stood there thinking. But all of a sudden he shook his head and, turning to his acquaintance, said: Let's see the bottle. A man seems to feel warmer inside if he gets a little drop.--And Arni shook himself as if the mental strain of his philosophizing had occasioned in him a slight chill.
HALLDOR KILJAN LAXNESS
NEW ICELAND
The road leads from Old Iceland to New Iceland. It is the way of men from the old to the new in the hope that the new will be better than the old. So Torfi Torfason has sold his sheep and his cows and his horses, torn himself away from his land, and journeyed to America-- where the raisins grow all over the place and where a much brighter future awaits us and our children. And he took his ewes by the horn for the last time, led them to the highest bidder, and said: Now this one is my good Goldbrow who brings back her two lambs from Mulata every fall. And what do you say to the coat of wool on Bobbin here? She's a fine sturdy lass, Bobbin, isn't she?
And thus he sold them one after another, holding them himself by the horn. And he pressed their horns against the callouses on his palm for the last time. These were his ewes, who had crowded around the manger in the dead of winter and stuck their noses into the fragrant hay. And when he came home from the long trip to the market town after having wrangled with some of the rascals there, he marvelled at how snow-white they were in