Isak was sorely despondent for some days.  Dark days they were.  He felt neither wish nor strength to start work on the fodder loft—­that could be left for Sivert to do some day.  The thing to be done now was the house for himself—­the last house to build.  He could not long hide from Sivert what he was doing; he was clearing the ground, and plain to see what for.  And one day he told.

“There’s a good bit of stone if we’d any use for stonework,” said he.  “And there’s another.”

Sivert showed no surprise, and only said:  “Ay, first-rate stones.”

“What you might think,” said his father.

“We’ve been digging round here now to find that other door-slab piece; might almost do to build here.  I don’t know....”

“Ay, ’tis no bad place to build,” said Sivert, looking round.

“Think so?  ’Twas none so bad, maybe, to have a bit of a place to house folk if any should come along.”

“Ay.”

“A couple of rooms’d be as well.  You saw how ’twas when they Swedish gentlemen came, and no proper place to house them.  But what you think:  a bit of a kitchen as well, maybe, if ’twas any cooking to be done?”

“Ay, ’twould be a shame to built with never a bit of kitchen,” says Sivert.

“You think so?”

Isak said no more.  But Sivert, he was a fine lad to grasp things, and get into his head all at once just what was needed in a place to put up Swedish gentlemen that chanced to come along; never so much as asked a single question, but only said:  “Doing it my way, now, you’d put up a bit of a shed on the north wall.  Folks coming along, ’d be useful to have a shed place to hang up wet clothes and things.”

And his father agrees at once:  “Ay, the very thing.”

They work at their stones again in silence.  Then asks Isak:  “Eleseus, he’s not come home, I suppose?”

And Sivert answers evasively:  “He’ll be coming home soon.”

’Twas that way with Eleseus:  he was all for staying away, living away on journeys.  Couldn’t he have written for the goods?  But he must go round and buy them on the spot.  Got them so much cheaper.  Ay, maybe, but what about cost of the journey?  He had his own way of thinking, it seemed.  And then, what did he want, anyway, with more cotton stuff, and coloured ribbons for christening caps, and black and white straw hats, and long tobacco pipes?  No one ever bought such things up in the hills; and the village folk, they only came up to Storborg when they’d no money.  Eleseus was clever enough in his way—­only to see him write on a paper, or do sums with a bit of chalk!  “Ay, with a head like yours,” said folk, admiring him.  And that was true enough; but he was spending overmuch.  They village folk never paid their owings, and yet even a fellow like Brede Olsen could come up to Storborg that winter and get cotton print and coffee and molasses and paraffin on credit.

Isak has laid out a deal of money already for Eleseus, and his store and his long journeyings about; there’s not overmuch left now out of the riches from the mine—­and what then?