ca--no. Did Inger remember how she'd said one day as
she'd never have children again? Ah, now she could see! No, better
give ear to them as were grown old and had borne children of their
own, for who should fathom the Lord His ways, said Oline.

And with that she padded off after Eleseus up through the forest,
shrunken with age, grey and abject, and for ever nosing after things,
imperishable. Going to old Sivert now, to let him know how she, Oline,
had managed to persuade Eleseus to come.

But Eleseus had needed no persuading, there was no difficulty there.
For, look you, Eleseus had turned out better, after all, than he'd
begun; a decent lad in his way, kindly and easy-going from a child,
only nothing great in the way of bodily strength. It was not without
reason he had been unwilling to come home this time; he knew well
enough that his mother had been in prison for child-murder; he had
never heard a word about it there in the town, but at home in the
village every one would remember. And it was not for nothing he had
been living with companions of another sort. He had grown to be more
sensitive and finer feeling than ever before. He knew that a fork was
really just as necessary as a knife. As a man of business, he used the
terms of the new coinage, whereas, out in the wilds, men still counted
money by the ancient _Daler_. Ay, he was not unwilling to walk across
the hills to other parts; here, at home, he was constantly forced to
keep down his own superiority. He tried his best to adapt himself to
the others, and he managed well; but it was always having to be on his
guard. As, for instance, when he had first come back to Sellanraa
a couple of weeks ago, he had brought with him his light spring
overcoat, though it was midsummer; and when he hung it up on a nail,
he might just as well have turned it so as to show the silver plate
inside with his initials, but he didn't. And the same with his
stick--his walking-stick. True, it was only an umbrella stick really,
that he had dismantled and taken the framework off; but here he had
not used it as he did in town, swinging it about--only carried it
hidden against his thigh.

No, it was not surprising that Eleseus went across the hills. He was
no good at building houses; he was good at writing with letters, a
thing not every one could do, but here at home there was no one in all
the place that set any store by the art of it save perhaps his mother.
He set off gaily through t