Old Mrs.Ellingsen had sent for him several times on this account, and it looked as if it were almost settled.
Things had been in this condition for some time; there was no great need of hurry in coming to a determination, as the situation was not to be filled until the autumn.
Lately, however, it had seemed to Nikolai that Mrs.Ellingsen was behaving rather strangely.

He noticed, too, that they were talking and making a great deal of fuss in the smithy; but it did not strike him that it might be Mrs.Ellingsen's intention to draw back, until one day when one of the men remarked scornfully that he did not suppose there was any one in the smithy who would think of supplanting Olaves.

If any one did, he would have to look out for himself, for they would all stick to Olaves.
Nikolai knew well that they frowned at him because he was always hard at work, saved up his pence, and firmly refused to join the others in a glass of beer or a dram.
He was without a companion.

And now, when this foreman's question hung in the balance, he noticed that the whole of his past life was stirred and dug up again till it was as thick as the grounds in a coffee-cup--from the old police and fighting story right back to his childhood's days among the timber-stacks.
These old stories were Nikolai's smarting wounds.

He was always thinking they were forgotten, and they were always coming up again, and now it was insupportable suffering.