Happy Isak!

But as he stops for oil the third time, there! his spectacles fall from his pocket.  And, worst of all, the two boys saw it.  Was there a higher power behind that little happening—­a warning against overweening pride?  He had put on those spectacles time and again that day to study the instructions, without making out a word; Eleseus had to help him with that.  Eyah, Herregud, ’twas a good thing, no doubt, to be book-learned.  And, by way of humbling himself, Isak determines to give up his plan of making Eleseus a tiller of soil in the wilds; he will never say a word of it again.

Not that the boys made any great business about that matter of the spectacles; far from it.  Sivert, the jester, had to say something, of course; it was too much for him.  He plucked Eleseus by the sleeve and said:  “Here, come along, we’ll go back home and throw those scythes on the fire.  Father’s going to do all the mowing now with his machine!” And that was a jest indeed.

Book Two

Chapter I

Sellanraa is no longer a desolate spot in in the waste; human beings live here—­seven of them, counting great and small.  But in the little time the haymaking lasted there came a stranger or so, folk wanting to see the mowing-machine.  Brede Olsen was first, of course, but Axel Stroem came, too, and other neighbours from lower down—­ay, from right down in the village.  And from across the hills came Oline, the imperishable Oline.

This time, too, she brought news with her from her own village; ’twas not Oline’s way to come empty of gossip.  Old Sivert’s affairs had been gone into, his accounts reckoned up, and the fortune remaining after him come to nothing.  Nothing!

Here Oline pressed her lips together and looked from one to another.  Well, was there not a sigh—­would not the roof fall down?  Eleseus was the first to smile.

“Let’s see—­you’re called after your Uncle Sivert, aren’t you?” he asked softly.

And little Sivert answered as softly again: 

“That’s so.  But I made you a present of all that might come to me after him.”

“And how much was it?”

“Between five and ten thousand.”

“Daler?” cried Eleseus suddenly, mimicking his brother.

Oline, no doubt, thought this ill-timed jesting.  Oh, she had herself been cheated of her due; for all that she had managed to squeeze out something like real tears over old Sivert’s grave.  Eleseus should know best what he himself had written—­so-and-so much to Oline, to be a comfort and support in her declining years.  And where was that support?  Oh, a broken reed!