It was said that the parish board had set the example in this also; for one of the first acts, performed by Lars as chairman, was a prosecution against the minister, concerning doubtful prerogatives.  The venerable pastor had lost, but had also immediately resigned.  At the time some had praised, others denounced, this act of Lars; but it had proved a bad example.  Now came the effects of his management in the form of loss to all the leading men of the parish; and consequently, the public opinion quickly changed.  The opposite party immediately found a champion; for Canute Aakre had come into the parish board,—­introduced there by Lars himself.

The struggle at once began.  All those youths, who, in their time, had been under Canute Aakre’s instruction, were now grown-up men, the best educated, conversant with all the business and public transactions in the parish; Lars had now to contend against these and others like them, who had disliked him from their childhood.  One evening after a stormy debate, as he stood on the platform outside his door, looking over the parish, a sound of distant threatening thunder came toward him from the large farms, lying in the storm.  He knew that that day their owners had become insolvent, that he himself and the savings-bank were going the same way:  and his whole long work would culminate in condemnation against him.

In these days of struggle and despair, a company of surveyors came one evening to Hogstad, which was the first farm at the entrance of the parish to mark out the line of a new railroad.  In the course of conversation, Lars perceived it was still a question with them whether the road should run through this valley, or another parallel one.

Like a flash of lightning it darted through his mind, that, if he could manage to get it through here, all real estate would rise in value, and not only he himself be saved, but his popularity handed down to future generations.  He could not sleep that night, for his eyes were dazzled with visions; sometimes he seemed to hear the noise of an engine.  The next day he accompanied the surveyors in their examination of the locality; his horses carried them, and to his farm they returned.  The following day they drove through the other valley, he still with them, and again carrying them back home.  The whole house was illuminated, the first men of the parish having been invited to a party made for the surveyors, which terminated in a carouse that lasted until morning.  But to no avail; for the nearer they came to the decision, the clearer it was to be seen that the road could not be built through here without great extra expense.  The entrance to the valley was narrow, through a rocky chasm, and the moment it swung into the parish the river made a curve in its way, so that the road would either have to make the same—­crossing the river twice—­or go straight forward through the old, now unused, churchyard.  But it was not long since the last burials there, for the church had been but recently moved.