nd says: "Ought to be shot!"

* * * * *

For three days the caravan peddles its wares, selling out the contents
of the sacks, and getting good prices. It was a brilliant piece of
business. The village folk were still well supplied with money after
the downfall of the mine, and were excellently in form in the way of
spending; those stuffed birds on springs were the very thing they
wanted; they set them up on chests of drawers in their parlours, and
also bought nice paper-knives, the very thing for cutting the leaves
of an almanac. Aronsen was furious. "Just as if I hadn't things every
bit as good in my store," said he.

Trader Aronsen was in a sorry way; he had made up his mind to keep
with these pedlars and their sacks, watching them all the time; but
they went separate ways about the village, each for himself, and
Aronsen almost tore himself to pieces trying to follow all at once.
First he gave up Fredrik Stroem, who was quickest at saying unpleasant
things; then Sivert, because he never said a word, but went on
selling; at last he stuck to following his former clerk, and trying to
set folk against him wherever he went in. Oh, but Andresen knew his
master that was--knew him of old, and how little he knew of business
and unlawful trading.

"Ho, you mean to say English thread's not prohibited?" said Aronsen,
looking wise.

"I know it is," answered Andresen. "But I'm not carrying any this
way; I can sell that elsewhere. I haven't a reel in my pack; look for
yourself, if you like."

"That's as it may be," says Aronsen. "Anyway, I know what's forbidden,
and I've shown you, so don't try to teach me."

Aronsen stood it for a whole day, then he gave up Andresen, too, and
went home. The pedlars had no one to watch them after that.

And then things began to go swimmingly. It was in the day when
womenfolk used to wear loose plaits in their hair; and Andresen, he
was the man to sell loose plaits. Ay, at a pinch he could sell fair
plaits to dark girls, and be sorry he'd nothing lighter; no grey
plaits, for instance, for that was the finest of all. And every
evening the three young salesmen met at an appointed place and went
over the day's trade, each borrowing from another anything he'd sold
out of; and Andresen would sit down, often as not, and take out a file
and file away the German trade-mark from a sportsman's whistle, or rub
out "Faber" on the pens and pencils. Andresen was a trump, an