All going well; there was life in the wilds now, and money growing, blossoming everywhere.

And look at Storborg, the new trader’s place—­there was a business on a proper scale!  This Aron must be a wizard, a devil of a fellow; he had learned somehow beforehand of the mining operations to come, and was on the spot all ready, with his shop and store, to make the most of it.  Business?  He did business enough for a whole State—­ay, enough for a king!  To begin with, he sold all kinds of household utensils and workmen’s clothes; but miners earning good money are not afraid to spend it; not content with buying necessaries only; they would buy anything and everything.  And most of all on Saturday evenings, the trading station at Storborg was crowded with folk, and Aron raking money in; his clerk and his wife were both called in to help behind the counter, and Aron himself serving and selling as hard as he could go at it—­and even then the place would not be empty till late at night.  And the owners of horse-flesh in the village, they were right; ’twas a mighty carting and hauling of wares up to Storborg; more than once they had to cut off corners of the old road and make new short cuts—­a fine new road it was at last, very different from Isak’s first narrow path up through the wilds.  Aron was a blessing and a benefactor, nothing less, with his store and his new road.  His name was not Aron really, that being only his Christian name; properly, he was Aronsen, and so he called himself, and his wife called him the same.  They were a family not to be looked down upon, and kept two servant-girls and a lad.

As for the land at Storborg, it remained untouched for the present.  Aronsen had no time for working on the soil—­where was the sense of digging up a barren moor?  But Aronsen had a garden, with a fence all round, and currant bushes and asters and rowans and planted trees—­ay, a real garden.  There was a broad path down it, where Aronsen could walk o’ Sundays and smoke his pipe, and in the background was the verandah of the house, with panes of coloured glass, orange and red and blue.  Storborg ...  And there were children—­three pretty little things about the place.  The girl was to learn to play her part as daughter of a wealthy trader, and the boys were to learn the business themselves—­ay, three children with a future before them!

Aronsen was a man to take thought for the future, or he would not have come there at all.  He might have stuck to his fishery, and like enough been lucky at that and made good money, but ’twas not like going into business; nothing so fine, a thing for common folk at best.  People didn’t take off their hats to a fisherman.  Aronsen had rowed his boat before, pulling at the oars; now he was going to sail instead.  There was a word he was always using:  “Cash down.”  He used it all sorts of ways.  When things went well, they were going “cash down.”  His children were to get on in the world, and live more “cash down” even than himself.  That was how he put it, meaning that they should have an easier life of it than he had had.