“I wonder, now, what he’d be asking for the place?”

Isak puts in a word here; like as not he’s more curious to know than Inger herself, but it must not seem that the idea of buying Storborg is any thought of his; he makes himself a stranger to it, and says now: 

“Why, what you want to know for, Inger?”

“I was but asking,” says she.  And both of them look at Andresen, waiting.  And he answers: 

Answers cautiously enough that as to the price, he can say nothing of that, but he knows what Aronsen says the place has cost him.

“And how much is that?” asks Inger, having no strength to keep her peace and be silent.

“’Tis sixteen hundred Kroner” says Andresen.

Ho, and Inger claps her hands at once to hear it, for if there is one thing womenfolk have no sense nor thought of, ’tis the price of land and properties.  But, anyway, sixteen hundred Kroner is no small sum for folk in the wilds, and Inger has but one fear, that Isak may be frightened off the deal.  But Isak, he sits there just exactly like a fjeld, and says only:  “Ay, it’s the big houses he’s put up.”

“Ay,” says Andresen again, “’tis just that.  ’Tis the fine big houses and all.”

Just when Andresen is making ready to go, Leopoldine slips out by the door.  A strange thing, but somehow she cannot bring herself to think of shaking hands with him.  So she has found a good place, standing in the new cowshed, looking out of a window.  And with a blue silk ribbon round her neck, that she hadn’t been wearing before, and a wonder she ever found time to put it on now.  There he goes, a trifle short and stout, spry on his feet, with a light, full beard, eight or ten years older than herself.  Ay, none so bad-looking to her mind!

And then the party came back from church late on Sunday night.  All had gone well, little Rebecca had slept the last few hours of the way up, and was lifted from the cart and carried indoors without waking.  Sivert has heard a deal of news, but when his mother asks, “Well, what you’ve got to tell?” he only says:  “Nay, nothing much.  Axel he’s got a mowing-machine and a harrow.”

“What’s that?” says his father, all interested.  “Did you see them?”

“Ay, I saw them right enough.  Down on the quay.”

“Ho!  So that was what he must go in to town for,” says his father.  And Sivert sits there swelling with pride at knowing better, but says never a word.

His father might just as well believe that Axel’s pressing business in the town had been to buy machines; his mother too might think so for all that.  Ho, but there was neither of them thought so in their hearts; they had heard whispers enough of what was the matter; of a new child-murder case in the wilds.

“Time for bed,” says his father at last.

Sivert goes off to bed, swelling with knowledge.  Axel had been summoned for examination; ’twas a big affair—­the Lensmand had gone with him—­so big indeed that the Lensmand’s lady, who had just had another child, had left the baby and was gone in to town with her husband.  She had promised to put in a word to the jury herself.