"That makes ten of us here," says he.
And Isak learns exactly where the new men have bought, he knows the
country all round in his head, and nods. "Ay, they've done well there;
wood for firing in plenty, and some big timber here and there. Ground
slopes down sou'west. Ay...."
Settlers--nothing could beat them, anyway--here were new folk coming
to live. The mine had come to nothing, but so much the better for the
land. A desert, a dying place? Far from it, all about was swarming
with life; two new men, four new hands to work, fields and meadows
and homes. Oh, the little green tracts in a forest, a hut and water,
children and cattle about. Corn waving on the moorlands where naught
but horsetail grew before, bluebells nodding on the fells, and yellow
sunlight blazing in the ladyslipper flowers outside a house. And human
beings living there, move and talk and think and are there with heaven
and earth.
Here stands the first of them all, the first man in the wilds. He came
that way, kneedeep in marsh-growth and heather, found a sunny slope
and settled there.
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