they come at all.  Lapps always keep to the outlying spots, in dark places; light and air distress them, they cannot thrive; ’tis with them as with maggots and vermin.  Now and again a calf or a lamb disappears without a trace from the outskirts of Sellanraa, from the farthest edge of the land—­there is no helping that.  And Sellanraa can bear the loss.  And even if Sivert could shoot, he has no gun, but anyway, he cannot shoot; a good-tempered fellow, nothing warlike; a born jester:  “And, anyway, I doubt but there’s a law against shooting Lapps,” says he.

Ay, Sellanraa can bear the loss of a head or so of cattle here and there; it stands there, great and strong.  But not without its troubles for all that.  Inger is not altogether pleased with herself and with life all the year round, no; once she made a journey to a place a long way off, and it seems to have left an ugly discontent behind.  It may disappear for a time, but always it returns.  She is clever and hard-working as in her best days, and a handsome, healthy wife for a man, for a barge of a man—­but has she no memories of Trondhjem; does she never dream?  Ay, and in winter most of all.  Full of life and spirits at times, and wanting no end of things—­but a woman cannot dance by herself, and so there was no dancing at Sellanraa.  Heavy thoughts and books of devotion?  Ay, well....  But there’s something, Heaven knows, in the other sort of life, something splendid and unequalled.  She has learned to make do with little; the Swedish stoneworkers are something, at any rate; strange faces and new voices about the place, but they are quiet, elderly men, given to work rather than play.  Still, better than nothing—­and one of them sings beautifully at his work; Inger stops now and again to listen.  Hjalmar is his name.

And that is not all the trouble at Sellanraa.  There is Eleseus, for instance—­a disappointment there.  He had written to say that his place in the engineer’s office was no longer open, but he was going to get another all right—­only wait.  Then came another letter; he was expecting something to turn up very shortly, a first-rate post; but meantime, he could not live on nothing at all, and when they sent him a hundred-Krone note from home, he wrote back to say it was just enough to pay off some small debts he had....  “H’m,” said Isak.  “But we’ve these stoneworker folk to pay, and a deal of things ... write and ask if he wouldn’t rather come back here and lend a hand.”

And Inger wrote, but Eleseus did not care about coming home again; no, no sense in making another journey all to no purpose; he would rather starve.

Well, perhaps there was no first-rate post vacant just then in the city, and Eleseus, perhaps, was not as sharp as a razor in pushing his way.  Heaven knows—­perhaps he wasn’t over clever at his work either.  Write? ay, he could write well enough, and quick and hard-working maybe, but there might be something lacking for all that.  And if so, what was to become of him?