“D’you mean him Geissler, then?”

“Ay, ’tis him I mean.  Ought to be shot!”

Axel laughs at this, and says:  “Geissler he was in town but a few days back; you should have talked to him there.  But if I might be so bold as to say, I doubt you’d better leave him alone, after all.”

“And why?” asks Aron angrily.

“Why?  I’ve a mind he’d be overwise and mysterious for you in the end.”

They argued over this for a while, and Aronsen grew more excited than ever.  At last Axel asked jestingly:  “Well, anyway, you’ll not be so hard on us all to run away and leave us to ourselves in the wilds?”

“Huh!  Think I’m going to stay fooling about here in your bogs and never so much as making the price of a pipe?” cried Aron indignantly.  “Find me a buyer and I’ll sell out.”

“Sell out?” says Axel.  “The land’s good ordinary land if she’s handled as should be—­and what you’ve got’s enough to keep a man.”

“Haven’t I just said I’ll not touch it?” cried Aronsen again in the gale.  “I can do better than that!”

Axel thought if that was so, ’twould be easy to find a buyer; but Aronsen laughed scornfully at the idea—­there was nobody there in the wilds had money to buy him out.

“Not here in the wilds, maybe, but elsewhere.”

“Here’s naught but filth and poverty,” said Aron bitterly.

“Why, that’s as it may be,” said Axel in some offence.  “But Isak up at Sellanraa he could buy you out any day.”

“Don’t believe it,” said Aronsen.

“’Tis all one to me what you believe,” said Axel, and turned to go.

Aronsen called after him:  “Hi, wait a bit!  What’s that you say—­Isak might take the place, was that what you said?”

“Ay,” said Axel, “if ’twas only the money.  He’s means enough to buy up five of your Storborg and all!”

Aronsen had gone round keeping wide of Sellanraa on his way up, taking care not to be seen; but, going back, he called in and had a talk with Isak.  But Isak only shook his head and said nay, ’twas a matter he’d never thought of, and didn’t care to.

But when Eleseus came back home that Christmas, Isak was easier to deal with.  True, he maintained that it was a mad idea to think of buying Storborg, ’twas nothing had ever been in his mind; still, if Eleseus thought he could do anything with the place, why, they might think it over.

Eleseus himself was midways between, as it were; not exactly eager for it, yet not altogether indifferent.  If he did settle down here at home, then his career in one way was at an end.  ’Twas not like being in a town.  That autumn, when a lot of people from his parts had been up for cross-examination in a certain place, he had taken care not to show himself; he had no desire to meet any that knew him from that quarter; they belonged to another world.  And was he now to go back to that same world himself?

His mother was all for buying the place; Sivert, too, said it would be best.  They stuck to Eleseus both of them, and one day the three drove down to Storborg to see the wonder with their own eyes.