that
when Jacob was a grown man and married he could take Peerout Castle,
with the right of buying it as soon as he was able. But Jacob thought
that very likely Nordrum meant it only as a joke; and anyway it was a
little early for him to be thinking about marriage. Nordrum was getting
on in years, however; he would be sure to need a head man about the
place by that time. Lisbeth said that she was going to stay at Hoel.
She was as well off there as she could expect to be, for Kjersti was
exceedingly kind to her. Lisbeth did not say anything about her
ambition to become a milkmaid. Indeed, that goal was so far off that
she did not dare to set her heart upon reaching it.

When they had talked thus freely for a while they began to look around
and call to mind all the plays they used to play and all the places
they used to frequent. There, right by the castle itself, they had had
their cow house with its pine-cone animals--why, yonder lay the big
bull even now! And there, on the other side of the heather ridge, had
been their saeter, where they had driven their animals many times during
the summer. And there on the hill Jacob had had his sawmill, that
Lisbeth was never to touch; and farther down she had had her dairy,
where he came and bought cheese in exchange for planks made out of
carrots that he had sliced in his sawmill. Not a stone or a mound could
be seen the whole way up to the stony raspberry patches on Big Hammer
Mountain that did not have some memory connected with it.

The brother and sister now felt themselves much older than when they
had lived at Peerout Castle. Lisbeth thought that Jacob had grown to be
very large, and he secretly thought the same about her. It was
therefore like holding a sort of festival for them to be visiting the
scenes together and talking of their former life as of something long
gone by, saying to each other now and then, "Do you remember?" What is
talked of in that way assumes unwonted proportions and appears to be
without flaw.

Thus they went about the whole day,--they had even been close up to Big
Hammer itself,--and it was already late in the afternoon when they
again drew near Peerout Castle. They did not seem to be in any haste to
reach it. They lingered by brook and stone to say, "Do you remember?"
often both at once and about the same thing. They chased each other in
aimless fashion. Their chief idea seemed to be to think continually of
something new to do, so that there sh