"Lord, Mr. Holm, but you gave me a fright before it was over. I don't believe I've ever been in such a tremble all my sinful life—unless it was the time I jumped across old Weismann's bull."
"Weismann's bull? What was that?"
"Why, it was one day I was standing outside the warehouse as innocent as a babe unborn, filling up a herring barrel, and before I knew where I was there was a great beast of a bull rushing down on me at full gallop. They'd been taking him down to the slaughter-house, and he'd broke away. Well, I couldn't get into the barrel, seeing it was more than half full as it was, and there wasn't time to get across to the sheds; the brute's horns were right on top of me, like a huge great pitchfork, and I reckoned Paal Abrahamsen's days were numbered. And then suddenly I got a revelation. I took a one—two—three, hop and a jump, and just as the beast thought he'd got me on the nail, up I went with an elegant somersault and landed clean astride of him, as neat as a—as an equidestrian statue."
"But how did you get down again?"
"Why, that was as easy as winking, seeing he flung me off and down Mrs. Brekke's cellar stairs, so I felt it a fortnight after."
On his way down to the office, Holm met a number of people who were all anxious to know who had bought the Spaniard. Holm was at no pains to uphold Don Almariva's reputation. When Nilsen the broker came up to congratulate him on his supposed purchase, he exclaimed: "Not me, my lad! Why, she's full of holes as a rusty sieve." And he walked off, singing:
"He needs be something more than bold,
Who'd fill his purse with Spanish gold."
Altogether, it was a red-letter day for Knut Holm. And on entering the office he confided to Betty that he had paid Banker Hermansen in full for that matter of the building site. He told her, also, how he and the banker had been secretly at war for years past, confessing frankly that up to now the honours had been with the other side.
It was Hermansen who had hindered his election to the Town Council, and possibly afterwards to parliament; all along he had barred his way—until now. And to-day, at last, the wind had changed, he had gained his first victory; now perhaps the banker's fortunes would begin to wane, in the town and farther afield—for he was a man of some influence in the country generally.
Holm stood at first bent slightly over the desk, but as he talked, and his enthusiasm increased, he drew himself up, a figure of such power and energy that Betty felt the banker would need to be well equipped indeed to outdo him. She grew more and more interested as he went on, following him with her eyes, until he came over to her and said: "I don't mind telling you, Miss Betty, it's not only Banker Hermansen, but the whole pack of them in the town here, that shrugged their shoulders and laughed behind my back at everything I did.