Of all the folk in the neighbourhood,
Aronsen was perhaps the most dejected; his reckoning was all upset.
When some one urged him to cultivate his land and live on that till
better times, he answered: "Cultivate the land? 'Twas not that I came
and set up house here for."
At last Aronsen could stand it no longer; he must go up to the mine
and see for himself how things were. It was a Sunday. When he got to
Sellanraa, he wanted Isak to go with him, but Isak had never yet set
foot on the mine since they had started; he was more at home on the
hillside below. Inger had to put in a word. "You might as well go with
Aronsen, when he asks you," she said. And maybe Inger was not sorry to
have him go; 'twas Sunday, and like as not she wanted to be rid of him
for an hour or so. And so Isak went along.
There were strange things to be seen up there in the hills; Isak did
not recognize the place at all now, with its huts and sheds, a whole
town of them, and carts and waggons and great gaping holes in the
ground. The engineer himself showed them round.
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