“Get away and wash your dirty mouth,” says Aronsen furiously.

“Ha ha ha!  Nay, you’ve no call to dance about that way; keep still and look like a picture!”

Geissler is tired, tired out, even his smoked glasses do not help him now, his eyes keep closing in the glare.

“Good-bye, Sivert man,” says he all at once.  “No, I can’t get up to Sellanraa this time, after all; tell your father.  I’ve a heap of things to see to.  But I’ll come later on—­say that....”

Aronsen spits after him, and says:  “Ought to be shot!”

* * * * *

For three days the caravan peddles its wares, selling out the contents of the sacks, and getting good prices.  It was a brilliant piece of business.  The village folk were still well supplied with money after the downfall of the mine, and were excellently in form in the way of spending; those stuffed birds on springs were the very thing they wanted; they set them up on chests of drawers in their parlours, and also bought nice paper-knives, the very thing for cutting the leaves of an almanac.  Aronsen was furious.  “Just as if I hadn’t things every bit as good in my store,” said he.

Trader Aronsen was in a sorry way; he had made up his mind to keep with these pedlars and their sacks, watching them all the time; but they went separate ways about the village, each for himself, and Aronsen almost tore himself to pieces trying to follow all at once.  First he gave up Fredrik Stroem, who was quickest at saying unpleasant things; then Sivert, because he never said a word, but went on selling; at last he stuck to following his former clerk, and trying to set folk against him wherever he went in.  Oh, but Andresen knew his master that was—­knew him of old, and how little he knew of business and unlawful trading.

“Ho, you mean to say English thread’s not prohibited?” said Aronsen, looking wise.

“I know it is,” answered Andresen.  “But I’m not carrying any this way; I can sell that elsewhere.  I haven’t a reel in my pack; look for yourself, if you like.”

“That’s as it may be,” says Aronsen.  “Anyway, I know what’s forbidden, and I’ve shown you, so don’t try to teach me.”

Aronsen stood it for a whole day, then he gave up Andresen, too, and went home.  The pedlars had no one to watch them after that.

And then things began to go swimmingly.  It was in the day when womenfolk used to wear loose plaits in their hair; and Andresen, he was the man to sell loose plaits.  Ay, at a pinch he could sell fair plaits to dark girls, and be sorry he’d nothing lighter; no grey plaits, for instance, for that was the finest of all.  And every evening the three young salesmen met at an appointed place and went over the day’s trade, each borrowing from another anything he’d sold out of; and Andresen would sit down, often as not, and take out a file and file away the German trade-mark from a sportsman’s whistle, or rub out “Faber” on the pens and pencils.  Andresen was a trump, and always had been.