When he saw me the other day in the door of his shop he seemed greatly pleased.

“Come in, come in,” he said.

“What is this I hear,” I said, “about your going back to Sweden?”

“For forty years,” he said, “I’ve been homesick for Sweden.  Now I’m an old man and I’m going home.”

“But, Carlstrom,” I said, “we can’t get along without you.  Who’s going to keep us mended up?”

“You have Charles Baxter,” he said, smiling.

For years there had been a quiet sort of rivalry between Carlstrom and Baxter, though Baxter is in the country and works chiefly in wood.

“But Baxter can’t mend a gun or a hay-rake, or a pump, to save his life,” I said.  “You know that.”

The old man seemed greatly pleased:  he had the simple vanity which is the right of the true workman.  But for answer he merely shook his head.

“I have been here forty years,” he said. “and all the time I have been homesick for Sweden.”

I found that several men of the town had been in to see Carlstrom and talked with him of his plans, and even while I was there two other friends came in.  The old man was delighted with the interest shown.  After I left him I went down the street.  It seemed as though everybody had heard of Carlstrom’s plans, and here and there I felt that the secret hand of the Scotch Preacher had been at work.  At the store where I usually trade the merchant talked about it, and the postmaster when I went in for my mail, and the clerk at the drug store, and the harness-maker.  I had known a good deal about Carlstrom in the past, for one learns much of his neighbours in ten years, but it seemed to me that day as though his history stood out as something separate and new and impressive.

When he first came here forty years ago I suppose Carlstrom was not unlike most of the foreigners who immigrate to our shores, fired with faith in a free country.  He was poor—­as poor as a man could possibly be.  For several years he worked on a farm—­hard work, for which, owing to his frail physique, he was not well fitted.  But he saved money constantly, and after a time he was able to come to town and open a little shop.  He made nearly all of his tools with his own hands, he built his own chimney and forge, he even whittled out the wooden gun which stands for a sign over the door of his shop.  He had learned his trade in the careful old-country way.  Not only could he mend a gun, but he could make one outright, even to the barrel and the wooden stock.  In all the years I have known him he has always had on hand some such work—­once I remember, a pistol—­which he was turning out at odd times for the very satisfaction it gave him.  He could not sell one of his hand-made guns for half as much as it cost him, nor does he seem to want to sell them, preferring rather to have them stand in the corner of his shop where he can look at them.  His is the incorruptible spirit of the artist!