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There's the farm at Storborg, with potatoes and corn and hay enough for the place itself, but all provisions else must come from Sellanraa. Is that all? Sivert must cart up his brother's goods from the steamer all for nothing. And is that all? His mother must get money out of his father to pay for his journeys. But is that all? The worst is to come. Eleseus manages his business like a fool.
Nothing but sitting still and tilling the ground, as it were, in his thoughts there could surely be no harm in that? There was no other guilt he could call to mind just then; he was only coming back from his work in the forest, a tired and hungry woodman, going home to Sellanraa he means no harm....
When he came down to the farm some hours later, Brede was still there, but Geissler took no notice of his questions; Geissler was tired, and waved him aside. He slept like a stone till next morning early, then he rose with the sun, and was himself again. "Sellanraa," said he, standing outside and looking all round. "All that money," said Isak; "does it mean I'm to have it all?"
When Andresen came down from the mine, he found Isak at Sellanraa, and they asked him in, gave him dinner and a cup of coffee. All the folk on the place were in there together now, and took part in the conversation. Andresen explained that his master, Aronsen, had sent him up to see how things were at the mines, if there was any sign of beginning work there again soon.
Sivert trundles over with his load, and sees at once who it is Geissler. "Funny meeting you here," says Geissler. His face is red and flourishing, but his eyes apparently cannot stand the glare of spring, he is wearing smoked glasses. He talks as brilliantly as ever. "Luckiest thing in the world," says he. "Save me going all the way up to Sellanraa; and I've a deal to look after.
Well, good-bye then, and maybe 'twas the very thing he wanted; there could be nothing suspicious now about his coming to Sellanraa. They set him to work at once on the cowshed. They worked and worked at the stone walls, and when a few days later another man came down from the mine, he was taken on too; now there were two spells, and the work went apace.
Isak has to go down to the village one day and why not? What for? "Nay, I don't know," says he. But he gets the cart cleaned up all fine, puts in the seat, and drives off, and a deal of victuals and such put in, too and why not? 'Twas for Eleseus at Storborg. Never a horse went out from Sellanraa but there was something taken down to Eleseus.
She is clever and hard-working as in her best days, and a handsome, healthy wife for a man, for a barge of a man but has she no memories of Trondhjem; does she never dream? Ay, and in winter most of all. Full of life and spirits at times, and wanting no end of things but a woman cannot dance by herself, and so there was no dancing at Sellanraa. Heavy thoughts and books of devotion?
Oline can point out the very spot where she was standing in the room when an angel of the Lord called her out to the door to hear a cry for help Axel goes back to his work in the woods, and when he has felled enough, begins carting it up to the sawmill at Sellanraa. Good, regular winter work, as long as it lasts; carting up rough timber and bringing back sawn planks.
Inger drove on, feeling all set up and pleased with herself, and, coming into the village, she may have been a trifle overproud in her bearing. Lensmand Heyerdahl's lady was not pleased at the sight of that cloak; the Sellanraa woman was forgetting her place forgetting where it was she had come from after five years' absence.
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