On one of his journeys down, he came upon several gangs of men at work on the moors; putting down stone sockets and fixing telegraph poles. Some of them are from the village, Brede Olsen is there too, for all that he has taken up land of his own and ought to be working on that. Isak wonders that Brede can find time.
The foreman asks if Isak can sell them telegraph poles. Isak says no. Not if he's well paid for them?—No.—Oh, Isak was grown a thought quicker in his dealings now, he could say no. If he sold them a few poles, to be sure it would be money in his pockets, so many Daler more; but he had no timber to spare, there was nothing gained by that. The engineer in charge comes up himself to ask, but Isak refuses.
"We've poles enough," says the engineer, "but it would be easier to take them from your ground up there, and save transport."
"I've no timber to spare myself," says Isak. "I want to get up a bit of a saw and do some cutting; there's some more buildings I'll need to have ready soon."
Here Brede Olsen put in a word, and says: "If I was you, Isak, I'd sell them poles."
For all his patience, Isak gave Brede a look and said: "Ay, I dare say you would."
"Well—what?" asks Brede.
"Only that I'm not you," said Isak.
Some of the workmen chuckled a little at this.
Ay, Isak had reason enough just then to put his neighbour down; that very day he had seen three sheep in the fields at Breidablik, and one of them he knew—the one with the flat ears that Oline had bartered away. He may keep it, thought Isak, as he went on his way; Brede and his woman may get all the sheep they want, for me!