Axel had no long time to rest at home, as it turned out; the autumn gales led to fresh trouble and bothersome work that he had brought upon himself:  the telegraph apparatus on his wall announced that the line was out of order.

Oh, but he had been thinking overmuch of the money, surely, when he took on that post.  It had been a nuisance from the start.  Brede Olsen had fairly threatened him when he went down to fetch the apparatus and tools; ay, had said to him in as many words:  “You don’t seem like remembering how I saved your life last winter!”

“’Twas Oline saved my life,” answered Axel.

“Ho, indeed!  And didn’t I carry you down myself on my own poor shoulders?  Anyway, you were clever enough to buy up my place in summer-time and leave me homeless in the winter.”  Ay, Brede was deeply offended; he went on: 

“But you can take the telegraph for me, ay, all the rubble of it for me.  I and mine we’ll go down to the village and start on something there—­you don’t know what it’ll be, but wait and see.  What about a hotel place where folk can get coffee?  You see but we’ll manage all right.  There’s my wife can sell things to eat and drink as well as another, and I can go out on business and make a heap more than you ever did.  But I don’t mind telling you, Axel, I could make things awkward for you in many odd ways, seeing all I know about the telegraph and things; ay, ’twould be easy enough both to pull down poles and cut the line and all.  And then you to go running out after it midway in the busy time.  That’s all I’ll say to you, Axel, and you bear it in mind....”

Now Axel should have been down and brought up the machines from the quay—­all over gilt and colouring they were, like pictures to see.  And he might have had them to look at all that day, and learn the manner of using them—­but now they must wait.  ’Twas none so pleasant to have to put aside all manner of necessary work to run and see after a telegraph line.  But ’twas the money....

Up on the top of the hill he meets Aronsen.  Ay, Aronsen the trader standing there looking and gazing out into the storm, like a vision himself.  What did he want there?  No peace in his mind now, it seems, but he must go up the fjeld himself and look at the mine with his own eyes.  And this, look you, Trader Aronsen had done from sheer earnest thought of his own and his family’s future.  Here he is, face to face with bare desolation on the forsaken hills, machines lying there to rust, carts and material of all sorts left out in the open—­’twas dismal to see.  Here and there on the walls of the huts were placards, notices written by hand, forbidding any one to damage or remove the company’s property—­tools, carts, or buildings.

Axel stops for a few words with the mad trader, and asks if he has come out shooting.

“Shooting?  Ay, if I could only get within reach of him!”

“Him?  Who, then?”

“Why, him that’s ruining me and all the rest of us hereabout.  Him that won’t sell his bit of fjeld and let things get to work again, and trade and money passing same as before.”