It was true enough.  Brede was going back to the tillage.  But he had first tried to get Axel Stroem to let him live there with Barbro.  He didn’t succeed.  Brede would never dream of interfering with the relations between his daughter and Axel, so he was careful not to make himself a nuisance, though to be sure it was a hard set-back, with all the rest.  Axel was going to get his new house built that autumn; well, then, when he and Barbro moved in there, why couldn’t Brede and his family have a hut?  No!  ’Twas so with Brede, he didn’t look at things like a farmer and a settler on new land; he didn’t understand that Axel had to move out because he wanted the hut for his growing stock; the hut was to be a new cowshed.  And even when this was explained to him, he failed to see the point of view; surely human beings should come before animals, he said.  No, a settler’s way was different; animals first; a man could always find himself a shelter for the winter.  But Barbro put in a word herself now:  “Ho, so you put the animals first and us after?  ’Tis just as well I know it!” So Axel had made enemies of a whole family because he hadn’t room to house them.  But he would not give way.  He was no good-natured fool, was Axel, but on the contrary he had grown more and more careful; he knew well that a crowd like that moving in would give him so many more mouths to fill.  Brede bade his daughter be quiet, and tried to make out that he himself would rather move down to the village again; couldn’t endure life in the wilderness, he said—­’twas only for that reason he was selling the place.

Oh, but to tell the truth it was not so much Brede was selling the place; ’twas the Bank and the storekeeper were selling up Breidablik, though for the sake of appearances they let it be done in Brede’s name.  That way, he thought he was saved from disgrace.  And Brede was not altogether dejected when Isak met him; he consoled himself with the thought that he was still Inspector on the telegraph line; that was a regular income, anyway, and in time he would be able to work up to his old position in the place as the Lensmand’s companion and this and that.  He was something affected at the change, of course; ’twas not so easy to say good-bye to a place where one had lived and toiled and moiled so many years, and come to care for.  But Brede, good man, was never long cast down.  ’Twas his best point, the charm of him.  He had once in his life taken it into his head to be a tiller of the soil, ’twas an inspiration had come to him.  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 Stroem now, that he could swear—­’twas plain indeed for any one to see.

No, there was nothing to fear as long as he had his health and could work for himself and those that looked to him, said Brede Olsen.  And the children were just growing up, and big enough now to go out and make their own way in the world, said he.  Helge was gone to the herring fisheries already, and Katrine was going to help at the doctor’s.  That left only the two youngest—­well, well, there was a third on the way, true, but, anyhow ...