ething
about making little Sivert his heir. Uncle Sivert had heard of Eleseus
and his grand doings in town, and the story did not please him; he
nodded and bit his lips, and muttered that a nephew called up as his
namesake--named after Uncle Sivert--should not come to want. But what
was this fortune Uncle Sivert was supposed to possess? Had he really,
besides his neglected farm and his fishery, the heap of money and
means folk generally thought? No one could say for certain. And apart
from that, Uncle Sivert himself was an obstinate man; he insisted that
little Sivert should come to stay with him. It was a point of honour
with him, this last; he should take little Sivert and look after him,
as the engineer had done with Eleseus.

But how could it be done? Send little Sivert away from home?--it was
out of the question. He was all the help left to Isak now. Moreover,
the lad himself had no great wish to go and stay with his famous
uncle; he had tried it once, but had come home again. He was
confirmed, shot up in stature, and grew; the down showed on his cheek,
his hands were big, a pair of willing slaves. And he worked like a
man.

Isak could hardly have managed to get the new barn built at all
without Sivert's help--but there it stood now, with bridge-way and
air-holes and all, as big as they had at the parsonage itself. True,
it was only a half-timbered building covered with boarding, but extra
stout built, with iron clinches at the corners, and covered with
one-inch plank from Isak's own sawmill. And Sivert had hammered in
more than one nail at the work, and lifted the heavy beams for the
framework till he was near fainting. Sivert got on well with his
father, and worked steadily at his side; he was made of the same
stuff. And yet he was not above such simple ways as going up the
hillside for tansy to rub with so as to smell nice in church. 'Twas
Leopoldine was the one for getting fancies in her head, which was
natural enough, she being a girl, and the only daughter. That summer,
if you please, she had discovered that she could not eat her porridge
at supper without treacle--simply couldn't. And she was no great use
at any kind of work either.

Inger had not yet given up her idea of keeping a servant; she
brought up the question every spring, and every time Isak opposed it
stubbornly. All the cutting out and sewing and fine weaving she could
do, not to speak of making embroidered slippers, if she had but the
time