“Goddag, Axel, and welcome back from the sale.  You’ll not mind me looking in to see how you and Barbro’s getting on?  And you’re getting on finely, to see, and building a new house and getting richer and richer!  And you been buying sheep, Isak?”

“Ay,” said Isak.  “You know her, maybe?”

“If I know her?  Nay....”

“With these flat ears, you can see.”

“Flat ears?  How d’you mean now?  And what then?  What I was going to say:  Who bought Brede’s place, after all?  I was just saying to Barbro here, who’d be your neighbours that way now? said I. And Barbro, poor thing, she sits crying, as natural enough, to be sure; but the Almighty that’s decreed her a new home here at Maaneland ...  Flat ears?  I’ve seen a deal of sheep in my day with flat ears and all.  And I’ll tell you, Isak, that machine of yours, ’twas almost more than my old eyes could see nor understand.  And what she’ll have cost you I won’t even ask for I never could count so far.  Axel, if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean; ’twas all as it might be Elijah and his chariot of fire, and Heaven forgive me that I say it....”

When the hay was all in, Eleseus began making preparations for his return to town.  He had written to the engineer to say he was coming, but received the extraordinary reply that times were bad, and they would have to economize; the office would have to dispense with Eleseus’ services, and the chief would do the work himself.

The deuce and all!  But after all, what did a district surveyor want with an office staff?  When he had taken Eleseus on as a youngster, he had done so, no doubt, only to show himself as a great man to these folks in the wilds; and if he had given him clothes and board till his confirmation, he had got some return for it in the way of writing work, that was true.  Now the boy was grown up, and that made all the difference.

“But,” said the engineer, “if you do come back I will do all I can to get you a place somewhere else, though it may be a difficult matter, as there are more young men than are wanted looking out for the same thing.  With kind regards....”

Eleseus would go back to town, of course, there could be no question about that.  Was he to throw himself away?  He wanted to get on in the world.  And he said nothing to those at home as to the altered state of affairs; it would be no use, and, to tell the truth, he felt a little out of humour with the whole thing.

Anyhow, he said nothing.  The life at Sellanraa was having its effect on him again; it was an inglorious, commonplace life, but quiet and dulling to the sense, a dreamy life; there was nothing for him to show off about, a looking-glass was a thing he had no use for.  His town life had wrought a schism in himself, and made him finer than the others, made him weaker; he began indeed to feel that he must be homeless anywhere.  He had come to like the smell of tansy again—­let that pass.  But there was no sense at all in a peasant lad’s standing listening in the morning to the girls milking the cows and thinking thus:  they’re milking, listen now; ’tis almost by way of something wonderful to hear, a kind of song in nothing but little streams, different from the brass bands in the town and the Salvation Army and the steamer sirens.  Music streaming into a pail....