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Nay, 'tis more than's worth your while." The fact was, she had already been talking over that very plan with Eleseus, she had heard it from Sivert, who could not keep the secret. And indeed, why should Sivert keep the matter secret when his father had surely told him of it on purpose to feel his way? It was not the first time he had used Sivert as a go-between. Well, but what had Eleseus answered?
It was a fine building, but took a deal of time before it was finished, with only three men to the work, and Sivert, moreover, often called away to help in the fields. The mowing-machine was useful now; and a good thing, too, to have three active women that could take a turn at the haymaking. All going well; there was life in the wilds now, and money growing, blossoming everywhere.
So the lads grew up in a paradise of dirt and ignorance, but they were nice lads for all that when they were washed, which happened now and again; little Sivert he was a splendid fellow, though Eleseus was something finer and deeper. "How do the gulls know about the weather?" he asked. "They're weather-sick," said his father. "But as for that they're no more so than the flies.
"Want to buy it, do you?" he asks jestingly. But suddenly he understands what it all means: 'tis Eleseus the old man has in mind. Oh, he's not forgotten him after all, but kept him faithfully in mind, just as his mother, only in his own way, nearer earth, and nearer to Sellanraa. "'Twill be going for a reasonable price, I doubt," says Sivert.
"Who were those people?" asked Brede. "Just out for a ride, or what?" Geissler had been having an anxious time, no doubt, and now he cooled down. But he had still something of life and eagerness in him, enough to do a little more; he went up into the hills with Sivert, and took a big sheet of paper with him, and drew a map of the ground south of the lake Heaven knows what he had in mind.
Sivert told him about Oline and her message, how she had said that Uncle Sivert was on the point of death. "Point of death?" cried the old man. "Said I was on the point of death, did she? A cursed old fool!" "Ha ha ha!" said Sivert. The old man looked sternly at him. "Eh? Laugh at a dying man, do you, and you called after me and all!"
What was there to talk about here? Also, Sivert was anxious to be done with it and get back home, there was work to do in the fields. "Tis that Jensine's calling him," Fredrik Ström explained. Fredrik, himself, by the way, had work on his own fields to be done that spring, and little time to waste; but for all that, he must look in on Aronsen the last day and get up an argument with him.
Sivert offered to stake twenty Kroner in notes against the gold piece, and do all the digging himself into the bargain if he won; but Andresen took offence at that. "Ho," said he, "and you'd like to go back home, no doubt, and say I'm no good at working on the land!"
Then, as before, one speaks and the other answers; the same speech as at first, but mark a new delight: it is set two octaves higher! Sivert stands looking at the birds, looking past them, far into a dream. A sound had floated through him, a sweetness, and left him standing there with a delicate; thin recollection of something wild and splendid, something he had known before, and forgotten again.
"Right, then we'll cross him out," said Sivert. Eleseus was the man for this sort of work; he was bright and quick, and encouraged the invalid by assuring him that things were all right; the two had got on well together, even to jesting at times.
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