ne Saturday evening came the engineer in
charge, to pay the men.

At sight of the engineer, Eleseus felt his heart jump, and stole out
of the house lest he should be asked about that coloured pencil. Oh,
there would be trouble now--and Sivert nowhere to be seen; he would
have to face it alone. Eleseus slipped round the corner of the house,
like a pale ghost, found his mother, and begged her to tell Sivert to
come. There was no help for it now.

Sivert took the matter less to heart--but then, he was not the chief
culprit. The two brothers went a little way off and sat down, and
Eleseus said: "If you'd say it was you, now!"

"Me?" said Sivert.

"You're younger, he wouldn't do anything to you."

Sivert thought over it, and saw that his brother was in distress; also
it flattered him to feel that the other needed his help.

"Why, I might help you out of it, perhaps," said he in a grown-up
voice.

"Ay, if you would!" said Eleseus, and quite simply gave his brother
the bit of pencil that was left. "You can have it for keeps," he said.

They were going in again together, but Eleseus recollected he had
something he must do over at the sawmill, or rather, at the cornmill;
something he must look to, and it would take some time--he wouldn't be
finished just yet. Sivert went in alone.

There sat the engineer, paying out notes and silver, and when he had
finished, Inger gave him milk to drink, a jug and a glass, and he
thanked her. Then he talked to little Leopoldine, and then, noticing
the drawings on the walls, asked straight out who had done that. "Was
it you?" he asked, turning to Sivert. The man felt, perhaps, he owed
something for Inger's hospitality, and praised the drawings just to
please her. Inger, on her part, explained the matter as it was: it was
her boys had made the drawings--both of them. They had no paper till
she came home and looked to things, so they had marked all about the
walls. But she hadn't the heart to wash it off again.

"Why, leave it as it is," said the engineer. "Paper, did you say?" And
he took out a heap of big sheets. "There, draw away on that till I
come round again. And how are you off for pencils?"

Sivert stepped forward simply with the stump he had, and showed how
small it was. And behold, the man gave him a new coloured pencil, not
even sharpened. "There, now you can start afresh. But I'd make the
horses red if I were you, and do the goats with blue. Never seen a
blue horse, have