The Road Leads On | Page 6

towns needing flour too
great. Further than that, a flood of hard times engulfed him, he and his

workers had a falling-out and all activity perished.
But for all that, the town still advanced step by step; a couple of new
buildings last year, a building or two this year, the district doctor chose
this as his headquarters, and that meant a drugstore, too. After a span of
years have elapsed, just see what we have here now: a post-office, a
telegraph station, a Grand Hotel, a circuit courthouse, a bank and a
cinema. Left over from a bygone day, a church and parsonage, but as
the perfect fruit of today, a schoolhouse and a home for the
schoolmaster, a lawyer and a sheriff, each with his separate
establishment, a police department and a police station, a little
printshop and the offices of the _Segelfoss News._ Aside from these,
there was little that one could expect. Spreading out through the parish
lay hosts of small farms and cottages, and the people lived on the yield
from soil and sea.
Little remained of the original village and its people. A few whose
history dated back to the regime of the old Lieutenant or the era of the
mill still survived, but these were few in number and played no part in
the present life of the town. They had hidden themselves away and
were living secluded lives; like the ghosts of a vanished age, they were
for the most part abroad only after dark, existed as the children of night
and were glad to remain unseen. They no longer had sons and
daughters over whom to watch and worry, for these had grown up and
gone out into the world. Just man and wife remained now, alone,
forgotten. Some of the men still went in for a bit of home fishing,
others found occupation in cleaning up the town at night, two of the
real old men were grave-diggers attached to the cemetery.
But once there was a time when these were human beings just like the
others who live here, and not so very long ago, either. Theodore paa
Bua was alive in those days, but now he is alive no more. One by one
they die off and only the real old ones remain.... And at the hour of
twilight of an evening, the old women come together about the pump to
exchange their mighty memories: the mill was running then with work
and good pay for their men, there were clothes to wear and a fire in the
stove, coffee steaming in the pot and treacle to pour on their porridge.

Now and then God was kind to them and there was a run of herring in
the fjord or a good year for cod at Lofoten. And now and then there
was a birth or a wedding or a funeral in their neighbourhood and all
was so good, so blissful. And now there is that Lassen; he used to be
from here and now at last he's got to be bishop and councillor to the
King, just like Joseph at the court of Pharaoh in the land of Egypt.
No Grand Hotel, no cinema, no bank here then. Ah yes, but those were
the days!

CHAPTER TWO
Life at Segelfoss was altered considerably under the new regime. The
daily routine was on a somewhat grander scale with far less contact
with the village folk. Gordon Tidemand chose to drive back and forth
between the store and the Manor in a light phaeton, though the distance
was anything but great, and he had put on other grand airs, as well. For
instance, what business had he to wear those yellow gloves for so short
a drive on a summer day? And he had invested in a smart little
motor-boat without having a sign of practical use for it, simply for the
purpose of racing out to meet incoming mail steamers; after circling
about and calling out a couple of words to the captain, he would head
straight in for shore. His point in this was possibly merely to show off
for the benefit of the passengers lining the rails. Indeed he was a
handsome fellow; there was something of the look of a foreigner about
him, with his swarthy skin and dark hair, his aquiline nose, his
sparkling brown eyes and his firm narrow mouth. He was always
smartly attired, his shoes highly polished. No, here was no Per paa Bua,
nor a true son of Theodore, either.
During his father's lifetime the seine-boats had fared forth regularly
every year, each exploring its own corner of the sea, ofttimes twice a
year, in the fall before the Lofoten fishing, and in the spring after the
codfishing was over. The