'No,' said Jörgen, gravely. 'But the smith has promised to let me marry his daughter, and he will advance me the money to pay you.'
'I do not care about the money,' replied Ebbe; 'you are welcome to keep it all.'
'Oh yes--so you say now,' answered Jörgen; 'but you would repent that offer to-morrow. No, let the arrangement I have proposed stand. And you had better go, Ebbe, before the smith returns. You know that he is very passionate, and you might get into a quarrel with him. Besides, I am weak and weary, and must get some sleep. Farewell, and may the Almighty bestow on you kinder feelings towards those among whom you may henceforth seek to win your bread, than you have shown to me. Shake hands with me, Ebbe, and then go.'
Jörgen sank back on his bed, and Ebbe left the cottage.
The following five years brought about a striking difference between the fates of the two fishermen. Jörgen had married the smith's daughter. He gave up fishing, sold his boat and established himself in the little town of Vædersö. There he betook himself to husbandry: he tilled the ground, ploughed, sowed, planted; in short he laboured with all the indefatigable activity, energy, and diligence, for which the inhabitants of the west country are so celebrated. At the end of two years he sold his house to buy a larger one on a thriving farm; field after field was added, and all prospered with him. Success seemed to smile on everything he undertook from the period that he relinquished his partnership with Ebbe.
'You have got an excellent son-in-law, smith,' said the peasants to Harfiz, often when they came to his smithy.
'He gets on very well,' the learned smith would reply, with a cheerful nod, indicative of content. 'But let me tell you, and you may believe what I say, that it was my medicine which has made him what he is. He has been quite another sort of man since I cured him, and restored him, I may say, to life, after Ebbe had killed him. He will be a greater man still.'
The prophecy was fulfilled as time passed on; for every year that went over his head brought some addition to Jörgen's prosperity. He was a happy man in his own family, and in all his transactions he was clever, prudent, and far-seeing.
The same space of time that seemed to have had wings for Jörgen, had crawled on slowly, unprofitably, and wearily for Ebbe. A portion of the sum he had received for his share of the cottage and the boat was appropriated to the purchase of the little plot of ground near Oxby church, where the mate had said his treasure was buried. The acquisition was not an expensive one certainly, for at that period a large quantity of waste land could be bought for about two dollars; so that after Ebbe had become the proprietor of the place, he had sufficient money left to build a house for himself on a corner of the ground he had bought.
Then commenced a course of labour which, in exertion, perseverance, and endurance, was far beyond anything Jörgen ever attempted, and yet was productive of no good results. The three stones were taken up and thrown aside, in order not to obstruct the work; then the elder-tree was removed; and after every obstacle had disappeared, Ebbe dug down, and down, until he came to the stratum of iron-hard, solid rock, which is to be found in that part of the country.