Chapter IV
Ringeby lay on the shore of a great lake; and was one of those busy commercial towns which have sprung up in the last fifty years from a nucleus consisting of a saw-mill and a flour-mill by the side of a waterfall. Now quite a number of modern factories had spread upwards along the river, and the place was a town with some four thousand inhabitants, with a church of its own, a monster of a school building, and numbers of yellow workmen’s dwellings scattered about at random in every direction. Otherwise Ringeby was much like any other little town. There were two lawyers, who fought for scraps of legal business, and the editors of two local papers, who were constantly at loggerheads before the Conciliation Board. There was a temperance lodge and Workers’ Union and a chapel and a picture palace. And every Sunday afternoon the good citizens of Ringeby walked out along the fjord, with their wives on their arms. On these occasions most of the men wore frock coats and grey felt hats; but Enebak, the tanner, being hunchbacked, preferred a tall silk hat, as better suited to eke out his height.
On Saturday evenings, when twilight began to fall, the younger men would meet at the corner outside Hammer’s store, to discuss the events of the week.
“Have you heard the latest news?” asked Lovli, the bank cashier, of his friend the telegraphist, who came up.
“News? Do you tell me that there’s ever any news in this accursed hole?”
“Merle Uthoug has come back from the mountains—engaged to be married.”
“The devil she is! What does the old man say to that?”
“Oh, well, the old man will want an engineer if he’s to get the new timber-mills into his clutches.”
“Is the man an engineer?”
“From Egypt. A Muhammadan, I daresay. Brown as a coffee-berry, and rolling in money.”