d Isak.

"Besides your share in the mine--you'll get a high percentage of
earnings, you know. Big money, Isak."

Said Isak: "You've paid me fairly already, and more than enough...."

Next morning Geissler left, hurrying off eastward, over toward Sweden.
"No, thanks," he said shortly, when Isak offered to go with him. It
was almost painful to see him start off in that poor fashion, on foot
and all alone. Inger had put up a fine parcel of food for him to take,
all as nice as she could make it, and made some wafers specially to
put in. Even that was not enough; she would have given him a can of
cream and a whole lot of eggs, but he wouldn't carry them, and Inger
was disappointed.

Geissler himself must have found it hard to leave Sellanraa without
paying as he generally did for his keep; so he pretended that he had
paid; made as if he had laid down a big note in payment, and said to
little Leopoldine: "Here, child, here's something for you as well."
And with that he gave her the silver box, his tobacco box. "You can
rinse it out and use it to keep pins and things in," he said. "It's
not the sort of thing for a present really. If I were at home I could
have found her something else; I've a heap of things...."

But Geissler's waterwork remained after Geissler had gone; there it
was, working wonders day and night, week after week; the fields turned
green, the potatoes ceased to flower, the corn shot up....

The settlers from the holdings farther down began to come up, all
anxious to see the marvel for themselves. Axel Stroem,--the neighbour
from Maaneland, the man who had no wife, and no woman to help him, but
managed for himself,--he came too. He was in a good humour that day;
he told them how he had just got a promise of a girl to help through
the summer--and that was a weight off his mind. He did not say who the
girl was, and Isak did not ask, but it was Brede's girl Barbro who was
to come. It would cost the price of a telegram to Bergen to fetch her;
but Axel paid the money, though he was not one of your extravagant
sort, but rather something of a miser.

It was the waterwork business that had enticed him up today; he had
looked it over from one end to the other, and was highly interested.
There was no big river on his land, but he had a bit of a stream; he
had no planks, either, to make culverts with, but he would dig his
channels in the earth; it could be done. Up to now, things were not
absolutely at their wors