“But there’s no draining it,” said Brede....  “It can’t be done.”

But it could be done.  Coming down the road that day Isak noticed other clearings; two of them were lower down, nearer the village, but there was one far up above, between Breidablik and Sellanraa—­ay, men were beginning to work on the land now; in the old days when Isak first came up, it had lain waste all of it.  And these three new settlers were folks from another district; men with some sense in their heads, by the look of things.  They didn’t begin by borrowing money to build a house; no, they came up one year and did their spade work and went away again; vanished as if they were dead.  That was the proper way; ditching first, then plough and sow.  Axel Stroem was nearest to Isak’s land now, his next-door neighbour.  A clever fellow, unmarried, he came from Helgeland.  He had borrowed Isak’s new harrow to break up his soil, and not till the second year had he set up a hayshed and a turf hut for himself and a couple of animals.  He had called his place Maaneland, because it looked nice in the moonlight.  He had no womenfolk himself, and found it difficult to get help in the summer, lying so far out, but he managed things the right way, no doubt about that.  Not as Brede Olsen did, building a house first, and then coming up with a big family and little ones and all, with neither soil nor stock to feed them.  What did Brede Olsen know of draining moorland and breaking new soil?

He knew how to waste his time idling, did Brede.  He came by Sellanraa one day, going up to the hills—­simply to look for precious metals.  He came back the same evening; had not found anything definite, he said, but certain signs—­and he nodded.  He would come up again soon, and go over the hills thoroughly, over towards Sweden.

And sure enough, Brede came up again.  He had taken a fancy to the work, no doubt; but he called it telegraph business this time—­must go up and look over the whole of the line.  Meanwhile his wife and children at home looked after the farm, or left it to look after itself.  Isak was sick and tired of Brede’s visits, and went out of the room when he came; then Inger and Brede would sit talking heartily together.  What could they have to talk about?  Brede often went down to the village, and had always some news to tell of the great folk there; Inger, on the other hand, could always draw upon her famous journey to Trondhjem and her stay there.  She had grown talkative in the years she had been away, and was always ready to gossip with any one.  No, she was no longer the same straightforward, simple Inger of the old days.