on the spot, and entered in my register at the time.
The timber cleared from the boundary line becomes your property. I
will come up some time and have a look at what you have done."

Isak trudged back to his home.

Chapter VIII

Time flies? Ay, when a man is growing old. Isak was not old, he had
not lost his vigour; the years seemed long to him. He worked on his
land, and let his iron beard grow as it would.

Now and again the monotony of the wilderness was broken by the sight
of a passing Lapp, or by something happening to one of the animals on
the place, then all would be as before. Once there came a number of
men at once; they rested at Sellanraa, and had some food and a dish of
milk; they asked Isak and Oline about the path across the hills;
they were marking out the telegraph line, they said. And once came
Geissler--Geissler himself, and no other. There he came, free and
easy as ever, walking up from the village, two men with him, carrying
mining tools, pick and spade.

Oh, that Geissler! Unchanged, the same as ever; meeting and greeting
as if nothing had happened, talked to the children, went into the
house and came out again, looked over the ground, opened the doors of
cowshed and hayloft and looked in. "Excellent!" said he. "Isak, have
you still got those bits of stone?"

"Bits of stone?" said Isak, wondering.

"Little heavy lumps of stone I saw the boy playing with when I was
here once before."

The stones were out in the larder, serving as weights for so many
mouse-traps; Isak brought them in. Geissler and the two men examined
them, talking together, tapped them here and there, weighed them in
the hand. "Copper," they said.

"Could you go up with us and show where you found them?" asked
Geissler.

They all went up together; it was not far to the place where Isak had
found the stones, but they stayed up in the hills for a couple of
days, looking for veins of metal, and firing charges here and there.
They came down to Sellanraa with two bags filled with heavy lumps of
stone.

Isak had meanwhile had a talk with Geissler, and told him everything
as to his own position: about the purchase of the land, which had come
to a hundred _Daler_ instead of fifty.

"That's a trifle," said Geissler easily. "You've thousands, like as
not, on your part of the hills."

"Ho!" said Isak.

"But you'd better get those title-deeds entered in the register as
soon as ever you can."

"Ay."

"Then the Sta