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He had also spent a couple of days before the case came on in going into the matter himself, and noting down what he remembered of Axel's own account given him at Maaneland. Most of the documents seemed to Geissler somewhat unsatisfactory; this Lensmand Heyerdahl was evidently a narrow-minded person, who had throughout endeavoured to prove complicity on Axel's part.
She put off going; one day she was feeling poorly, she said; the next it looked like rain. She made up to Barbro with smooth words about the food. Oh, there was a mighty difference in the food now at Maaneland; 'twas different living now, and a mighty difference in the coffee now. Oh, she stopped at nothing, that Oline; asked Barbro's advice on things she knew better herself.
Nevertheless, he went down to Maaneland again next Sunday, and this time he took his stick. They talked as before, and Axel was out of it altogether, as before. "'Tis a big place your father's got," said he. "And building again, now, it seems." "Ay, it's all very well for him," said Eleseus, anxious to show off a little. "He can afford it. It's another matter with poor folk like ourselves."
True, he had not made a success of it, but he had taken up other plans in the same airy way and got on better; and who could say perhaps his samples of ore might after all turn out something wonderful in time! And then look at Barbro, he had got her fixed up there at Maaneland, and she'd not be leaving Axel Ström now, that he could swear 'twas plain indeed for any one to see.
Higher up, things went more slowly, for all that the soil was richer that way. The one who had ventured farthest was Isak, when he settled down at Sellanraa; he was the boldest and the wisest of them all. Later, Axel Ström had come and now there was a new man besides. The new man was to have a big patch of arable land and forest down below Maaneland there was land enough.
By the simplest means, merely by demanding an unreasonable price for a mine, he had succeeded in checking the entire development of the district. Ay, a strong man! Axel Ström from Maaneland could bear them out in this; he was the one who had last met Geissler. Brede's girl Barbro had had a lawsuit in the town, and come home acquitted; but Geissler, he had been there in court all the time.
Eleseus looked down the field: his father was furiously at work driving a tethering-peg into the ground; he seemed to find it a difficult matter, for all that the ground was soft enough. The brothers set off down the road; they came to Maaneland, and there stood Barbro in the doorway and called to them to come up. "You going away again, Eleseus?
It did not occur to either of them that Brede might "do better" and keep the post himself. When they reached Maaneland, Oline was there already, on her way down. Ay, a strange creature, Oline, crawling about fat and round as a maggot, and over seventy years and all, but still getting about.
Axel Ström was nearest to Isak's land now, his next-door neighbour. A clever fellow, unmarried, he came from Helgeland. He had borrowed Isak's new harrow to break up his soil, and not till the second year had he set up a hayshed and a turf hut for himself and a couple of animals. He had called his place Maaneland, because it looked nice in the moonlight.
But there were signs enough, great or small, that things were different now at Maaneland. Barbro felt herself no more at home there now than any other serving-maid; no more bound to the place. Axel could see that his hold on her had loosened with the death of the child. He had thought to himself so confidently: wait till the child comes! But the child had come and gone.
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