It was said that the parish board had set
the example in this also; for one of the first acts, performed by
Lars as chairman, was a prosecution against the minister,
concerning doubtful prerogatives. The venerable pastor had lost,
but had also immediately resigned. At the time some had praised,
others denounced, this act of Lars; but it had proved a bad
example. Now came the effects of his management in the form of
loss to all the leading men of the parish; and consequently, the
public opinion quickly changed. The opposite party immediately
found a champion; for Canute Aakre had come into the parish
board,--introduced there by Lars himself.
The struggle at once began. All those youths, who, in their time,
had been under Canute Aakre's instruction, were now grown-up men,
the best educated, conversant with all the business and public
transactions in the parish; Lars had now to contend against these
and others like them, who had disliked him from their childhood.
One evening after a stormy debate, as he stood on the platform
outside his door, looking over the parish, a sound of distant
threatening thunder came toward him from the large farms, lying in
the storm. He knew that that day their owners had become
insolvent, that he himself and the savings-bank were going the
same way: and his whole long work would culminate in condemnation
against him.
In these days of struggle and despair, a company of surveyors came
one evening to Hogstad, which was the first farm at the entrance
of the parish to mark out the line of a new railroad.
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