Age was upon him, he was ripening for the chimney-corner. The
triumph he had stolen in the matter of the door-slab faded away in a
few days; 'twas a false thing, and not made to last. Isak stooped a
little now in his walk.
Had he not once been so much of a man that he grew wakeful and
attentive in a moment if one but said a word of stone, a word of
digging? And 'twas no long time since, but a few years, no more. Ay,
and in those days, folk that were shy of a bit of draining work kept
out of his way. Now he was beginning, little by little, to take such
matters more calmly; eyah, _Herregud_! All things were changed, the
land itself was different now, with broad telegraph roads up through
the woods, that had not been there before, and rocks blasted and
sundered up by the water, as they had not been before. And folk, too,
were changed. They did not greet coming and going as in the old days,
but nodded only, or maybe not even that.
But then--in the old days there had been no Sellanraa, but only a turf
hut, while now.... There had been no Margrave in the old days.
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