'Tis all beyond understanding, but nothing for it; they must
camp and sleep out again that night. They talk the matter over: Can
the work have stopped? Should they turn and go back again? "Not a bit
of it," says Andresen.

Next morning a man walks into their camp--a pale, haggard man who
looks at them frowningly, piercingly. "That you, Andresen?" says the
man. It is Aronsen, Aronsen the trader. He does not say "No" to a cup
of hot coffee and something to eat with the caravan, and settles down
at once. "I saw the smoke of your fire, and came up to see what it
was," says he. "I said to myself, 'Sure enough, they're coming to
their senses, and starting work again.' And 'twas only you, after all!
Where you making for, then?"

"Here."

"What's that you've got with you?"

"Goods."

"Goods?" cries Aronsen. "Coming up here with goods for sale? Who's to
buy them? There's never a soul. They left last Saturday gone."

"Left? Who left?"

"All the lot. Not a soul on the place now. And I've goods enough
myself, anyway. A whole store packed full. I'll sell you anything you
like."

Oh, Trader Aronsen in difficulties again! The mine has shut down.

They ply him with coffee till he grows calmer, and asks what it all
means.

Aronsen shakes his head despairingly. "'Tis beyond understanding,
there's no words for it," says he. All had been going so well, and he
had been selling goods, and money pouring in; the village round all
flourishing, and using the finest meal, and a new schoolhouse, and
hanging lamps and town-made boots, and all! Then suddenly their
lordships up at the mine take it into their heads that the thing isn't
paying, and close down. Not paying? But it paid them before? Wasn't
there clean copper there and plain to see at every blasting? 'Twas
rank cheating, no less. "And never a thought of what it means to a man
like me. Ay, I doubt it's as they say; 'tis that Geissler's at the
bottom of it all, same as before. No sooner he'd come up than the work
stopped; 'twas as if he'd smelt it out somehow."

"Geissler, is he here, then?"

"Is he not? Ought to be shot, he ought! Comes up one day by the
steamer and says to the engineer: 'Well, how's things going?'--'All
right, as far as I can see,' says the engineer. But Geissler he just
stands there, and asks again: 'Ho, all right, is it?'--'Ay, as far as
I know,' says the engineer. But as true as I'm here, no sooner the
post comes up from that same boat Geissler had com