"Him? Who, then?"
"Why, him that's ruining me and all the rest of us hereabout. Him that won't sell his bit of fjeld and let things get to work again, and trade and money passing same as before."
"D'you mean him Geissler, then?"
"Ay, 'tis him I mean. Ought to be shot!"
Axel laughs at this, and says: "Geissler he was in town but a few days back; you should have talked to him there. But if I might be so bold as to say, I doubt you'd better leave him alone, after all."
"And why?" asks Aron angrily.
"Why? I've a mind he'd be overwise and mysterious for you in the end."
They argued over this for a while, and Aronsen grew more excited than ever. At last Axel asked jestingly: "Well, anyway, you'll not be so hard on us all to run away and leave us to ourselves in the wilds?"
"Huh! Think I'm going to stay fooling about here in your bogs and never so much as making the price of a pipe?" cried Aron indignantly. "Find me a buyer and I'll sell out."
"Sell out?" says Axel. "The land's good ordinary land if she's handled as should be—and what you've got's enough to keep a man."