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Updated: June 15, 2025
"I'm out on business opening up connections." "No call to be so free with your betters, Katrine," says her father reprovingly. Oh, Brede Olsen is all respect towards Eleseus, mighty respectful for him to be. And well he may, 'tis but wise of him, seeing he owes money up at Storborg, and here's his creditor before him. And Eleseus?
They village folk never paid their owings, and yet even a fellow like Brede Olsen could come up to Storborg that winter and get cotton print and coffee and molasses and paraffin on credit. Isak has laid out a deal of money already for Eleseus, and his store and his long journeyings about; there's not overmuch left now out of the riches from the mine and what then?
Why, nothing very much, 'tis only Andresen, the chief clerk from Storborg, come up for a bit of a walk this way his master having sent him. Nothing more. And no great excitement among the folk at Sellanraa over that 'twas not as in the old days, when a stranger was a rare sight on their new land, and Inger made a great to-do. No, Inger's grown quieter now, and keeps to herself these days.
Storborg ... And there were children three pretty little things about the place. The girl was to learn to play her part as daughter of a wealthy trader, and the boys were to learn the business themselves ay, three children with a future before them! Aronsen was a man to take thought for the future, or he would not have come there at all.
True, he maintained that it was a mad idea to think of buying Storborg, 'twas nothing had ever been in his mind; still, if Eleseus thought he could do anything with the place, why, they might think it over. Eleseus himself was midways between, as it were; not exactly eager for it, yet not altogether indifferent. If he did settle down here at home, then his career in one way was at an end.
A notable little man is Andresen; his shoulder is weighed down slantwise on one side, and his jacket pulled all awry at the neck, the way he goes, but he carries his burden on and on. Storborg and the business Eleseus had left well, not bought it straight out on the spot, perhaps, 'tis more than Andresen could afford; better afford to wait a bit and get the whole maybe for nothing.
Isak is looking ahead, to the time when he will need to build a little house here, a little home for himself and Inger, and as well to get to work a bit on the site, and clear it, while Sivert is down at Storborg. Otherwise the boy would be asking questions, and that was not to Isak's mind.
Isak puts in a word here; like as not he's more curious to know than Inger herself, but it must not seem that the idea of buying Storborg is any thought of his; he makes himself a stranger to it, and says now: "Why, what you want to know for, Inger?" "I was but asking," says she. And both of them look at Andresen, waiting.
It was Isak's old idea to drain the bogs at Storborg and till the land there properly; the bit of a store was only to be an extra, a convenience, to save folk going all the way down to the village for a reel of thread. So Sivert and Andresen stood there digging, and talking now and again when they stopped for a rest.
It flatters him to have folk coming up from the village to buy at Storborg, so that he gives them credit as soon as asked; and when this is noised abroad, there come still more of them to buy the same way. The whole thing is going to rack and ruin. Eleseus is an easy man, and lets it go; the store is emptied and the store is filled again. All costs money. And who pays it? His father.
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