chief would do the work himself.

The deuce and all! But after all, what did a district surveyor want
with an office staff? When he had taken Eleseus on as a youngster, he
had done so, no doubt, only to show himself as a great man to these
folks in the wilds; and if he had given him clothes and board till
his confirmation, he had got some return for it in the way of writing
work, that was true. Now the boy was grown up, and that made all the
difference.

"But," said the engineer, "if you do come back I will do all I can to
get you a place somewhere else, though it may be a difficult matter,
as there are more young men than are wanted looking out for the same
thing. With kind regards...."

Eleseus would go back to town, of course, there could be no question
about that. Was he to throw himself away? He wanted to get on in the
world. And he said nothing to those at home as to the altered state of
affairs; it would be no use, and, to tell the truth, he felt a little
out of humour with the whole thing.

Anyhow, he said nothing. The life at Sellanraa was having its effect
on him again; it was an inglorious, commonplace life, but quiet and
dulling to the sense, a dreamy life; there was nothing for him to show
off about, a looking-glass was a thing he had no use for. His town
life had wrought a schism in himself, and made him finer than the
others, made him weaker; he began indeed to feel that he must be
homeless anywhere. He had come to like the smell of tansy again--let
that pass. But there was no sense at all in a peasant lad's standing
listening in the morning to the girls milking the cows and thinking
thus: they're milking, listen now; 'tis almost by way of something
wonderful to hear, a kind of song in nothing but little streams,
different from the brass bands in the town and the Salvation Army and
the steamer sirens. Music streaming into a pail....

It was not the way at Sellanraa to show one's feelings overmuch, and
Eleseus dreaded the moment when he would have to say good-bye. He was
well equipped now; again his mother had given him a stock of woven
stuff for underclothes, and his father had commissioned some one to
hand him money as he went out of the door. Money--could Isak really
spare such a thing as money? But it was so, and no otherwise. Inger
hinted that it would doubtless be the last time; for was not Eleseus
going to get on and rise in the world by himself?

"H'm," said Isak.

There was an atmosphere