the infinite asks only whom it can use for its ends, and who is
useless. Viola tout."

"And when I die," asked Peer--"what then?"

"You! Are you still going about feeling your own pulse and wanting to
live for ever? My dear fellow, YOU don't exist. There is just one person
on our side--the world-will. And that includes us all. That's what I
mean by 'we.' And we are working towards the day when we can make
God respect us in good earnest. The spirit of man will hold a Day
of Judgment, and settle accounts with Olympus--with the riddle, the
almighty power beyond. It will be a great reckoning. And mark my
words--that is the one single religious idea that lives and works in
each and every one of us--the thing that makes us hold up our heads and
walk upright, forgetting that we are slaves and things that die."

Suddenly he looked at his watch. "Excuse me a moment. If the telegraph
office is open . . ." and he rose and went in.

When he returned, Klaus and Peer were talking of the home of their
boyhood and their early days together.

"Remember that time we went shark-fishing?" asked Klaus.

"Oh yes--that shark. Let me see--you were a hero, weren't you, and beat
it to death with your bare fists--wasn't that it?" And then "Cut the
line, cut the line, and row for your lives," he mimicked, and burst out
laughing.

"Oh, shut up now and don't be so witty," said Klaus. "But tell me, have
you ever been back there since you came home?"

Peer told him that he had been to the village last year. His old
foster-parents were dead, and Peter Ronningen too; but Martin Bruvold
was there still, living in a tiny cottage with eight children.

"Poor devil!" said Klaus.

Ferdinand Holm had sat down again, and now he nodded towards the moon.
"An old chum of yours? Well, why don't we send him a thousand crowns?"

There was a little pause. "I hope you'll let me join you," went on
Ferdinand, taking a note for five hundred crowns from his waistcoat
pocket. "You don't mind, do you?"

Peer glanced at him and took the note. "I'm delighted for poor old
Martin's sake," he said, putting the note in his waistcoat pocket.
"That'll make fifteen hundred for him."

Klaus Brock looked from one to the other and smiled a little. The talk
turned on other things for a while, and then he asked:

"By the way, Peer, have you seen that advertisement of the British
Carbide Company's?"

"No, what about?"

"They want tenders for the damming and harnessing o