soil will probably go on harvesting half the crop of the outlying fields
for the rest of time. There is every reason to think so--unless our
descendants are more intelligent than we, and refuse to be smitten with
the demoralizing effects of the tourist traffic.

Now, my friend, you mustn't believe me; this is the point where you must
shake your head. There is a professor scuttling about the country, a born
mediocrity with a little school knowledge about history; you had better
ask him. He'll give you just as much mediocre information, my friend, as
your vision can grasp and your brain endure.

* * * * *

Hardly had Manufacturer Brede left when Paul began to live a most
irregular life again. More and more all roads were closed to him; he saw
no way out and therefore preferred to make himself blind, which gave him
an excuse for not seeing. Seven of our permanent guests now left together:
the telephone operators, Tradesman Batt, Schoolmistresses Johnsen and
Palm, and two men who were in some sort of business, I don't quite know
what. This whole party went across the fjeld to Stordalen to be driven
about in cars.

Cases of various kinds of foodstuffs arrived for Paul; they were carried
up one evening by a man from the village. He had to make several journeys
with the side of his cart let down, and bring the cases over the roughest
spots one by one. That was the kind of road it was. Josephine received the
consignment, and noticed that one of the cases gave forth the sound of a
liquid splashing inside. That had come to the wrong place, she said, and
writing another address on it, she told the man to take it back. It was
sirup that had come too late, she said; she had got sirup elsewhere in the