“And it’s all going to shut down now?” asked Aronsen.

“Shut down?” repeated the engineer in astonishment.  “A nice thing that’d be for South America if we did!” No, they were discontinuing their preliminary operations for a while, only for a short time; they had seen what the place was like, what it could produce; then they could build their aerial railway and get to work on the southern side of the fjeld.  He turned to Isak:  “You don’t happen to know where this Geissler’s got to?”

“No.”

Well, no matter—­they’d get hold of him all right.  And then they’d start to work again.  Shut down?  The idea!

Isak is suddenly lost in wonder and delight over a little machine that works with a treadle—­simply move your foot and it works.  He understands it at once—­’tis a little smithy to carry about on a cart and take down and set up anywhere you please.

“What’s a thing like that cost, now?” he asks.

“That?  Portable forge?  Oh, nothing much.”  They had several of the same sort, it appeared, but nothing to what they had down at the sea; all sorts of machines and apparatus, huge big things.  Isak was given to understand that mining, the making of valleys and enormous chasms in the rock, was not a business that could be done with your fingernails—­ha ha!

They stroll about the place, and the engineer mentions that he himself will be going across to Sweden in a few days’ time.

“But you’ll be coming back again?” says Aronsen.

Why, of course.  Knew of no reason why the Government or the police should try to keep him.

Isak managed to lead round to the portable forge once more and stopped, looking at it again.  “And what might a bit of a machine like that cost?” he asked.

Cost?  Couldn’t say off-hand—­a deal of money, no doubt, but nothing to speak of in mining operations.  Oh, a grand fellow was the engineer; not in the best of humour himself just then, perhaps, but he kept up appearances and played up rich and fine to the last.  Did Isak want a forge?  Well, he might take that one—­the company would never trouble about a little thing like that—­the company would make him a present of a portable forge!

An hour after, Aronsen and Isak were on their way down again.  Aronsen something calmer in mind—­there was hope after all.  Isak trundles down the hillside with his precious forge on his back.  Ay, a barge of a man, he could bear a load!  The engineer had offered to send a couple of men down with it to Sellanraa next morning, but Isak thanked him—­’twas more than worth his while.  He was thinking of his own folk; ’twould be a fine surprise for them to see him come walking down with a smithy on his back.

But ’twas Isak was surprised after all.

A horse and cart turned into the courtyard just as he reached home.  And a highly remarkable load it brought.  The driver was a man from the village, but beside him walked a gentleman at whom Isak stared in astonishment—­it was Geissler.