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Updated: June 18, 2025
Aronsen had gone round keeping wide of Sellanraa on his way up, taking care not to be seen; but, going back, he called in and had a talk with Isak. But Isak only shook his head and said nay, 'twas a matter he'd never thought of, and didn't care to. But when Eleseus came back home that Christmas, Isak was easier to deal with.
Andresen drank and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and looked at the time. "Is it far up to the mines?" he asked. "No, 'tis an hour's walk, or hardly that." "I'm going up to look over them, d'you see, for him, Aronsen I'm his chief clerk." "Ho!" "You'll know me yourself, no doubt; I'm Aronsen's chief clerk. You've been down buying things at our place before." "Ay."
"Ho, you mean to say English thread's not prohibited?" said Aronsen, looking wise. "I know it is," answered Andresen. "But I'm not carrying any this way; I can sell that elsewhere. I haven't a reel in my pack; look for yourself, if you like." "That's as it may be," says Aronsen. "Anyway, I know what's forbidden, and I've shown you, so don't try to teach me."
"Think he'll sell out?" asks Isak. "Well, he did speak of it. And he's got rid of the lad he had already. Ay, a curious man, a queer sort of man, that Aronsen, 'tis sure. Sends away his lad could be working on the place getting in winter fuel and carting hay with that horse of his, but keeps on his storeman chief clerk, he calls him.
"You'd not give my price," said Aronsen. They went over the house and stores, the warehouse and sheds, inspected the miserable remains of the stock, consisting of a few mouth-organs, watch-chains, boxes of coloured papers, lamps with hanging ornaments, all utterly unsaleable to sensible folks that lived on their land. There were a few cases of nails and some cotton print, and that was all.
He might have stuck to his fishery, and like enough been lucky at that and made good money, but 'twas not like going into business; nothing so fine, a thing for common folk at best. People didn't take off their hats to a fisherman. Aronsen had rowed his boat before, pulling at the oars; now he was going to sail instead. There was a word he was always using: "Cash down."
'I only wish I'd never set my foot in this hole, and a poor thing it's been for me and mine. Then I asked him if he didn't think of selling out himself. 'Ay, says he, 'that's just what I'm thinking of. This bit of bogland, says he, 'a hole and a desert I'm not making a single Krone the whole day now, says he." They laughed at Aronsen, and had no pity for him at all.
Of all the folk in the neighbourhood, Aronsen was perhaps the most dejected; his reckoning was all upset. When some one urged him to cultivate his land and live on that till better times, he answered: "Cultivate the land? 'Twas not that I came and set up house here for." At last Aronsen could stand it no longer; he must go up to the mine and see for himself how things were. It was a Sunday.
"Not a bit of it," says Andresen. Next morning a man walks into their camp a pale, haggard man who looks at them frowningly, piercingly. "That you, Andresen?" says the man. It is Aronsen, Aronsen the trader. He does not say "No" to a cup of hot coffee and something to eat with the caravan, and settles down at once. "I saw the smoke of your fire, and came up to see what it was," says he.
After Aronsen had raged for a while, and grown more and more desperate, he went up one day to Sellanraa and closed the deal. Ay, Aronsen did. Eleseus got it for the price he had offered; land and house and sheds, live stock and goods, for fifteen hundred Kroner.
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