Next morning Geissler went out to the river to look at the mill.  It was small enough, and roughly built; ay, a mill for dwarfs, for trollfolk, but strong and useful for a man’s work.  Isak led his guest a little farther up the river, and showed him another fall he had been working on a bit; it was to turn a saw, if so be God gave him health.  “The only thing,” he said, “it’s a heavy long way from school:  I’ll have to get the lads to stay down in the village.”  But Geissler, always so quick to find a way, saw nothing to worry about here.  “There are more people buying and settling here now,” said he.  “It won’t be long before there’s enough to start a school.”

“Ay, maybe, but not before my boys are grown.”

“Well, why not let them live on a farm down in the village?  You could drive in with the boys and some food, and bring them up again three weeks—­six weeks after; it would be easy enough for you, surely?”

“Ay, maybe,” said Isak.

Ay, all things would be easy enough, if Inger came home.  House and land and food and grand things enough, and a big sum of money too he had, and his strength; he was hard as nails.  Health and strength—­ ay, full and unspoiled, unworn, in every way, the health and strength of a man.

When Geissler had gone, Isak began thinking of many presumptuous things.  Ay, for had not Geissler, that blessing to them all, said at parting that he would send a message very soon—­would send a telegram as soon as ever he could.  “You can call in at the post office in a fortnight’s time,” he had said.  And that in itself was a wonderful thing enough.  Isak set to work making a seat for the cart.  A seat, of course, that could be taken off when using the cart for manure, but to be put in again when any one wanted to drive.  And when he had got the seat made, it looked so white and new that it had to be painted darker.  As for that, there were things enough that had to be done!  The whole place wanted painting, to begin with.  And he had been thinking for years past of building a proper barn with a bridge, to house in the crop.  He had thought, too, of getting that saw set up and finished; of fencing in all his cultivated ground; of building a boat on the lake up in the hills.  Many things he had thought of doing.  But hard as he worked, unreasonably hard—­what did it help against time?  Time—­it was the time that was too short.  It was Sunday before he knew, and then directly after, lo it was Sunday again!

Paint he would, in any case; that was decided and emphatic.  The buildings stood there grey and bare—­stood there like houses in their shirt sleeves.  There was time yet before the busy season; the spring was hardly begun yet; the young things were out, but there was frost in the ground still.