lf
a dozen bottles of beer, and had them opened sparingly, one after
another. "What--twenty _Ore_ for the waitress?" said his friends;
"ten's quite enough."

"Doesn't do to be stingy," said Eleseus.

Nothing stingy nor mean about Eleseus, no; he come from a good home,
from a big place, where his father the Margrave owned endless tracts
of timber, and four horses and thirty cows and three mowing-machines.
Eleseus was no liar, and it was not he who had spread abroad all the
fantastic stories about the Sellanraa estate; 'twas the district
surveyor who had amused himself talking grandly about it a long while
back. But Eleseus was not displeased to find the stories taken more or
less for truth. Being nothing in himself, it was just as well to be
the son of somebody that counted for something; it gave him credit,
and was useful that way. But it could not last for ever; the day came
when he could no longer put off paying, and what was he to do then?
One of his friends came to his help, got him into his father's
business, a general store where the peasants bought their
wares--better than nothing. It was a poor thing for a grown lad to
start at a beginner's wage in a little shop; no short cut to the
position of a Lensmand; still, it gave him enough to live on, helped
him over the worst for the present--oh, 'twas not so bad, after all.
Eleseus was willing and good-tempered here too, and people liked him;
he wrote home to say he had gone into trade.

This was his mother's greatest disappointment. Eleseus serving in a
shop--'twas not a whit better than being assistant at the store
down in the village. Before, he had been something apart, something
different from the rest; none of their neighbours had gone off to live
in a town and work in an office. Had he lost sight of his great aim
and end? Inger was no fool; she knew well enough that there was a
difference between the ordinary and the uncommon, though perhaps she
did not always think to reckon with it. Isak was simpler and slower of
thought; he reckoned less and less with Eleseus now, when he reckoned
at all; his eldest son was gradually slipping out of range. Isak no
longer thought of Sellanraa divided between his two sons when he
himself should be gone.

* * * * *

Some way on in spring came engineers and workmen from Sweden; going
to build roads, put up hutments, work in various ways, blasting,
levelling, getting up supplies of food, hiri