Once more there came visitors to Sellanraa; an engineer, with a foreman and a couple of workmen, marking out telegraph lines again over the hills. By the route they were taking now, the line would be carried a little above the house, and a straight road cut through the forest. No harm in that. It would make the place less desolate, a glimpse of the world would make it brighter. "This place," said, the engineer, "will be just about midway between two lines through the valleys on either side. They'll very likely ask you to take on the job of linesman for both." "Ho!" said Isak. "It will be twenty-five _Daler_ a year in your pocket." "H'm," said Isak. "And what am I to do for that?" "Keep the line in repair, mend the wires when necessary, clear away forest growth on the route as it comes up. They'll set up a little machine thing in the house here, to hang on the wall, that'll tell you when you're wanted. And when it does, you must leave whatever you're doing and go." Isak thought it over. "I could do it all right in winter," he said. "That's no good. It would have to be for the whole year, summer and winter alike." "Can't be done," said Isak. "Spring and summer and autumn I've my work on the land, and no time for other things." The engineer looked at him for quite a while, and then put an astonishing question, as follows: "Can you make more money that way?" "Make more money?" said Isak. "Can you earn more money in a day by working on the land than you could by working for us?" "Why, as to that, I can't say," answered Isak. "It's just this way, you see--'tis the land I'm here for. I've many souls and more beasts to keep alive--and 'tis the land that keeps us. 'Tis our living." "If you won't, I can find some one else," said the engineer. But Isak only seemed rather relieved at the threat. He did not like to disoblige the great man, and tried to explain. "'Tis this way," he said, "I've a horse and five cows, besides the bull. I've twenty sheep and sixteen goats. The beasts, they give us food and wool and hide; we must give them food." "Yes, yes, of course," said the other shortly. "Well, and so I say, how am I to feed them when I've to run away all times in the busy season, to work on the telegraph line?" "Say no more about it," said the engineer. "I'll get the man down below you, Brede Olsen; he'll be glad to take it." He turned to his men with a brief word: "Now, lads, we'll be getting on," Now Oline had heard from the way Isak spoke that he was stiff-necked and unreasonable in his mind, and she would make the most of it. "What was that you said, Isak? Sixteen goats? There's no more than fifteen," said she. Isak looked at her, and Oline looked at him again, straight in the face. "Not sixteen goats?" said he. "No," said she, looking helplessly towards the strangers, as if to say how unreasonable he was. "Ho!" said Isak softly. He drew a tuft of his beard between his teeth and stood chewing it.