and cart to fetch a doctor if I want one.  Don’t try your games with me, young man!  Can’t even wait till I’m gone, it seems.  I’ve shown you the document and you’ve seen it, and it’s there in the chest—­that’s all I’ve got to say.  But if you go running off and leave me now, you can just carry word to Eleseus and tell him to come.  He’s not named after me and called by my earthly name—­let him come.”

But for all the threatening tone, Sivert only thought a moment, and said:  “Ay, I’ll tell Eleseus to come.”

Oline was still at Sellanraa when Sivert got back.  She had found time to pay a visit lower down, to Axel Stroem and Barbro on their place, and came back full of mysteries and whisperings.  “That girl Barbro’s filling out a deal of late—­Lord knows what it may mean.  But not a word that I’ve said so!  And here’s Sivert back again?  No need to ask what news, I suppose?  Your Uncle Sivert’s passed away?  Ay, well, an old man he was and an aged one, on the brink of the grave.  What—­not dead?  Well, well, we’ve much to be thankful for, and that’s a solemn word!  Me talking nonsense, you say?  Oh, if I’d never more to answer for!  How was I to know your uncle he was lying there a sham and a false pretender before the Lord?  Not long to live, that’s what I said.  And I’ll hold by it, when the time comes, before the Throne.  What’s that you say?  Well, and wasn’t he lying there his very self in his bed, and folding his hands on his breast and saying ’twould soon be over?”

There was no arguing with Oline, she bewildered her adversaries with talk and cast them down.  When she learned that Uncle Sivert had sent for Eleseus, she grasped at that too, and made her own advantage of it:  “There you are, and see if I was talking nonsense.  Here’s old Sivert calling up his kinsfolk and longing for a sight of his own flesh and blood; ay, he’s nearing his end!  You can’t refuse him, Eleseus; off with you at once this minute and see your uncle while there’s life in him.  I’m going that way too, we’ll go together.”

Oline did not leave Sellanraa without taking Inger aside for more whisperings of Barbro.  “Not a word I’ve said—­but I could see the signs of it!  And now I suppose she’ll be wife and all on the farm there.  Ay, there’s some folk are born to great things, for all they may be small as the sands of the sea in their beginnings.  And who’d have ever thought it of that girl Barbro!  Axel, yes, never doubt but he’s a toiling sort and getting on, and great fine lands and means and all like you’ve got here—­’tis more than we know of over on our side the hills, as you know’s a true word, Inger, being born and come of the place yourself.  Barbro, she’d a trifle of wool in a chest; ’twas naught but winter wool, and I wasn’t asking and she never offered me.  We said but Goddag and Farvel, for all that I’d known her from she was a toddling child all that time I was here at Sellanraa by reason of you being away and learning knowledge at the Institute....”