d always
had been.

Sivert, on the other hand, was rather a disappointment. Not that he
was any way slack, and failed to sell his goods--'twas he, indeed,
sold most--but he did not get enough for them. "You don't put in
enough patter with it," said Andresen.

No, Sivert was no hand at reeling off a lot of talk; he was a
fieldworker, sure of what he said, and speaking calmly when he spoke
at all. What was there to talk about here? Also, Sivert was anxious to
be done with it and get back home, there was work to do in the fields.

"Tis that Jensine's calling him," Fredrik Stroem explained. Fredrik,
himself, by the way, had work on his own fields to be done that
spring, and little time to waste; but for all that, he must look in on
Aronsen the last day and get up an argument with him. "I'll sell him
the empty sacks," said he.

Andresen and Sivert stayed outside while he went in. They heard grand
goings-on inside the store, both talking at once, and Fredrik setting
up a laugh now and again; then Aronsen threw open the door and showed
his visitor out. Oh, but Fredrik didn't come out--no, he took his
time, and talked a lot more. The last thing they heard from outside
was Fredrik trying to sell Aronsen a lot of rocking-horses.

Then the caravan went home again--three young men full of life and
health. They marched and sang, slept a few hours in the open, and went
on again. When they got back to Sellanraa on the Monday, Isak had
begun sowing. The weather was right for it; the air moist, with the
sun peeping out now and again, and a mighty rainbow strung right
across the heavens.

The caravan broke up--_Farvel, Farvel_....

* * * * *

Isak at his sowing; a stump of a man, a barge of a man to look at,
nothing more. Clad in homespun--wool from his own sheep, boots from
the hide of his own cows and calves. Sowing--and he walks religiously
bareheaded to that work; his head is bald just at the very top, but
all the rest of him shamefully hairy; a fan, a wheel of hair and
beard, stands out from his face. 'Tis Isak, the Margrave.

'Twas rarely he knew the day of the month--what need had he of that?
He had no bills to be met on a certain date; the marks on his almanac
were to show the time when each of the cows should bear. But he knew
St. Olaf's Day in the autumn, that by then his hay must be in, and he
knew Candlemas in spring, and that three weeks after then the bears
came out of their winter