"Well, you can have it, anyway," said Sivert.
"It's between five and ten thousand."
"Daler?" cried Sivert; he couldn't help it.
Now Eleseus never reckoned in Daler, but he didn't like to say no at the time, so he just nodded, and left it at that till next day.
Then he took up the matter again. "Aren't you sorry you gave me all that yesterday?" he said.
"Woodenhead! Of course not," said Sivert. That was what he said, but—well, five thousand Daler was five thousand Daler, and no little sum; if his brother were anything but a lousy Indian savage, he ought to give back half.
"Well, to tell the truth," explained Eleseus, "I don't reckon to get fat on that legacy, after all."
Sivert looked at him in astonishment. "Ho, don't you?"
"No, nothing special, that is to say. Not what you might call par excellence."
Eleseus had some notions of accounts, of course, and Uncle Sivert's money-chest, the famous bottle-case, had been opened and examined while he was there; he had had to go through all the accounts and make up a balance sheet. Uncle Sivert had not set this nephew to work on the fields or mending of herring nets; he had initiated him into a complex muddle of figures, the weirdest book-keeping ever seen. If a man had paid his taxes some years back in kind, with a goat, say, or a load of dried cod, there was neither flesh nor fish to show for it now; but old Sivert searched his memory and said, "He's paid!"