Then it was that Aronsen at once rose up and set out for the new workings, the new promised land.  He even tried to get Andresen to go with him:  “What’s the sense of you staying on here in the wilds?” said he.  “Much better come with me.”  But Andresen would not leave; incomprehensible, but so it was, there was something which held him to the spot; he seemed to thrive there, had taken root.  It must be Andresen who had changed, for the place was the same as ever.  Folk and things were unaltered; the mining work had turned away to other tracts, but folk in the wilds had not lost their heads over that; they had their land to till, their crops, their cattle.  No great wealth in money, true, but in all the necessaries of life, ay, absolutely all.

Even Eleseus was not reduced to misery because the stream of gold was flowing elsewhere; the worst of it was that in his first exaltation he had bought great stocks of goods that were now unsaleable.  Well, they could stay there for the time being; it looked well, at any rate, to have plenty of wares in a store.

No, a man of the wilds did not lose his head.  The air was not less healthy now than before; there were folk enough to admire new clothes; there was no need of diamonds.  Wine was a thing he knew from the feast at Cana.  A man of the wild was not put out by the thought of great things he could not get; art, newspapers, luxuries, politics, and such-like were worth just what folk were willing to pay for them, no more.  Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all.  A dull and desolate existence?  Nay, least of all.  A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition.  Sivert, walking one evening by the river, stops on a sudden; there on the water are a pair of ducks, male and female.  They have sighted him; they are aware of man, and afraid; one of them says something, utters a little sound, a melody in three tones, and the other answers with the same.  Then they rise, whirl off like two little wheels a stone’s-throw up the river, and settle again.  Then, as before, one speaks and the other answers; the same speech as at first, but mark a new delight:  it is set two octaves higher!  Sivert stands looking at the birds, looking past them, far into a dream.

A sound had floated through him, a sweetness, and left him standing there with a delicate; thin recollection of something wild and splendid, something he had known before, and forgotten again.  He walks home in silence, says no word of it, makes no boast of it, ’twas not for worldly speech.  And it was but Sivert from Sellanraa, went out one evening, young and ordinary as he was, and met with this.

It was not the only thing he met with—­there were more adventures beside.  Another thing which happened was that Jensine left Sellanraa.  And that made Sivert not a little perturbed in his mind.