"Doubt if they're any good, any of them," said Geissler. And noticing
at the same moment that there were two boys in the room, he caught
hold of little Sivert and gave him a coin. A remarkable man was
Geissler. His eyes, by the way, had begun to look soreish; there was a
kind of redness at the edges. Might have been sleeplessness; the same
thing comes at times from drinking of strong waters. But he did not
look dejected at all; and for all his talking of this and that between
times, he was thinking no doubt of his document all the while, for
suddenly he picked up the pen and wrote a piece more.

At last he seemed to have finished.

He turned to Isak: "Well, as I said, it won't make you a rich man all
at once, this deal. But there may be more to come. We'll fix it up so
that you get more later on. Anyhow, I can give you two hundred now."

Isak understood but little of the whole thing, but two hundred _Daler_
was at any rate another miracle, and an unreasonable sum. He would get
it on paper, of course, not paid in cash, but let that be. Isak had
other things in his head just now.

"And you think she'll be pardoned?" he asked.

"Eh? Oh, your wife! Well, if there'd been a telegraph office in the
village, I'd have wired to Trondhjem and asked if she hadn't been set
free already."

Isak had heard men speak of the telegraph; a wonderful thing, a string
hung up on big poles, something altogether above the common earth. The