But the auction at Loreng went on for several days.
BOOK III
Chapter I
Once more a deep valley, with sun-steeped farms on the hillsides between
the river and the mountain-range behind.
One day about midsummer it was old Raastad himself that came down to
meet the train, driving a spring-cart, with a waggon following behind.
Was he expecting visitors? the people at the station asked him. "Maybe
I am," said old Raastad, stroking his heavy beard, and he limped about
looking to his horses. Was it the folk who had taken the Court-house?
"Ay, it's likely them," said the old man.
The train came in, and a pale man, with grey hair and beard, and blue
spectacles, stepped out, and he had a wife and three children with him.
"Paul Raastad?" inquired the stranger. "Ay, that's me," said the old
man. The stranger looked up at the great mountains to the north, rising
dizzily into the sky. "The air ought to be good here," said he. "Ay, the
air's good enough, by all accounts," said Raastad, and began loading up
the carts.
They drove off up the hill road. The man and his wife sat in the
spring-cart, the woman with a child in her lap, but a boy and a girl
were seated on the load in the baggage-waggon behind Raastad. "Can we
see the farm from here?" asked the woman, turning her head. "There,"
said the old man, pointing. And looking, they saw a big farmstead high
up on a sunny hill-slope, close under the crest, and near by a long
low house with a steep slate roof, the sort of place where the district
officers used to live in old days.
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