Isak had more news from the village:  the Lensmand’s lady had had a baby.  Inger suddenly interested at this:  “Boy or girl?”

“Why, I didn’t hear which,” said Isak.

But the Lensmand’s lady had had a child after all—­after all the way she’d spoken at the women’s club about the increasing birth-rate among the poor; better give women the franchise and let them have some say in their own affairs, she said.  And now she was caught.  Yes, the parson’s wife had said, “She’s had some say in lots of things—­but her own affairs are none the better for it, ha ha ha!” And that was a clever saying that went the round of the village, and there were many that understood what was meant—­Inger no doubt as well; it was only Isak who did not understand.

Isak understood his work, his calling.  He was a rich man now, with a big farm, but the heavy cash payments that had come to him by a lucky chance he used but poorly; he put the money aside.  The land saved him.  If he had lived down in the village, maybe the great world would have affected even him; so much gaiety, so many elegant manners and ways; he would have been buying useless trifles, and wearing a red Sunday shirt on weekdays.  Here in the wilds he was sheltered from all immoderation; he lived in clear air, washed himself on Sunday mornings, and took a bath when he went up to the lake.  Those thousand Daler—­well, ’twas a gift from Heaven, to be kept intact.  What else should he do?  His ordinary outgoings were more than covered by the produce of his fields and stock.

Eleseus, of course, knew better; he had advised his father to put the money in the Bank.  Well, perhaps that was the best, but Isak had put off doing it for the present—­perhaps it would never be done at all.  Not that Isak was above taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on.  Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—­but he was no master hand at that, no.  He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time.  But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion.  And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year.  Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away till his hands were blistered and had to be wrapped in rags.  He had lost his appetite for a week or so, but worked none the worse for it now.  Something had come over the boy; it looked perhaps as if a certain unhappy love affair or something of the sort, a touch of never-to-be-forgotten sorrow and distress, had done him a world of good.  And, look you, he had by now smoked the last of the tobacco he had brought with him from town; ordinarily, that would have been enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed.  Even Sivert, the jester, could not put him out of countenance.  Today the pair of them were lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco—­“unless you’d rather smoke it raw?” he said.