“How d’you think he’s getting on, Eleseus?” asks Isak suddenly.

“Getting on?” says Sivert, to gain time.

“Doesn’t seem to be doing so well.”

“H’m.  He says it’ll go all right.”

“You spoken to him about it?”

“Nay; but Andresen he says so.”

Isak thought over this, and shook his head.  “Nay, I doubt it’s going ill,” says he.  “Tis a pity for the lad.”

And Isak gloomier than ever now, for all he’d been none too bright before.

But then Sivert flashes out a bit of news:  “There’s more folk coming to live now.”

“How d’you say?”

“Two new holdings.  They’ve bought up close by us.”

Isak stands still with his crowbar in hand; this was news, and good news, the best that could be.  “That makes ten of us here,” says he.  And Isak learns exactly where the new men have bought, he knows the country all round in his head, and nods.  “Ay, they’ve done well there; wood for firing in plenty, and some big timber here and there.  Ground slopes down sou’west.  Ay....”

Settlers—­nothing could beat them, anyway—­here were new folk coming to live.  The mine had come to nothing, but so much the better for the land.  A desert, a dying place?  Far from it, all about was swarming with life; two new men, four new hands to work, fields and meadows and homes.  Oh, the little green tracts in a forest, a hut and water, children and cattle about.  Corn waving on the moorlands where naught but horsetail grew before, bluebells nodding on the fells, and yellow sunlight blazing in the ladyslipper flowers outside a house.  And human beings living there, move and talk and think and are there with heaven and earth.

Here stands the first of them all, the first man in the wilds.  He came that way, kneedeep in marsh-growth and heather, found a sunny slope and settled there.  Others came after him, they trod a path across the waste Almenning; others again, and the path became a road; carts drove there now.  Isak may be content, may start with a little thrill of pride; he was the founder of a district, the pioneer.

“Look here, we can’t go wasting time on this bit of a house place if we’re to get that fodder loft done this year,” says he.

With a new brightness, new spirit; as it were, new courage and life.

Chapter X

A woman tramping up along the road.  A steady summer rain falls, wetting her, but she does not heed it; other things are in her mind—­anxiety.  Barbro it is, and no other—­Brede’s girl, Barbro.  Anxious, ay; not knowing how the venture will end; she has gone from service at the Lensmand’s, and left the village.  That is the matter.

She keeps away from all the farms on the road up, unwilling to meet with folk; easy to see where she was going, with a bundle of clothing on her back.  Ay, going to Maaneland, to take service there again.