The messenger pretended not to notice his confusion, and went on, smiling: 

“I asked if maybe there was any message besides, and they said no, just give it you as it was—­but happen you’d like to hear how ’twas given...?”

“Go on—­tell me,” said the young man, still with some embarrassment.

“Well, I pulled up there, as I said, and started off again just towards dusk about.  Got down just past the meadow below the house, and hears someone running after.  Thought maybe I’d left something behind, and so I stopped.  ’Twas a neat little maid, with red cheeks, and no kerchief on her head.  ‘What’s wrong?’ says I.

“‘Nothing,’ says the little maid, and looks down at her shoes.  ’Only you said—­didn’t you say Olof was staying your way just now?’

“Well, that was right enough, and I said so.  ‘And what then?’

“‘Why,’ says she, ‘I know him—­and I’d a message for him.’

“‘Aha,’ says I, and laughed a bit.

“‘’Twas no more than a greeting,’ says she, all of a hurry like.

“Why, then, I could carry it, ’twas an easy matter enough.

“‘Can I trust you?’ says the girl.

“‘Why, d’you think I’d lose it on the way?’ says I.

“‘If you did—­or if you went and told about it...’

“‘Nay,’ says I.  ’I’m an old man, my dear, and not given to playing tricks that away.’

“‘Yes, I know,’ says she.  ‘I can trust you.’  And then she gives me this.

“‘That’s for him?’ says I.  ‘Give it him just as it is?’

“’Yes.  You won’t open it, I know.  Though, to be sure, anyone can tell what’s inside.  But be sure no one sees you give it him.  There’s no message, only just that.’

“Well, I was just on the way to tell her I’d sense enough to do that without being asked—­but all of a sudden she’s off, racing away with her hair flying behind.  Ay, that was the way of it, and now I’ve told you, I’ll be off.”

“Good-night, then,” said Olof.  “And many thanks.”

Olof sank into a chair by the table, holding the packet in his hand.  He knew well enough what was inside, but hesitated to open it.  He was thinking of what had happened there—­he could see it himself as in a vision.  A bright-eyed girl, slight of figure, hardly more than a child, sat at one end of the room, and at the other a traveller, eating from the red-painted box in which he carried his food.  The man spoke of the weather, how the first snow had come, and it was good going underfoot; where he came from, too, the woodcutters had already started work.  More work than usual this season, and the gang foreman had taken on a new hand, a young fellow—­Olof was his name.

And the girl all but cries his name aloud, blushes violently, and lays down her work to listen.  But the traveller says no more of what she is longing to hear, only talks of this and that—­all manner of trifling things.  The girl is restless, uncertain what to do—­but she must do something.  And she watches the man’s face closely as he sits smoking his pipe on the bench.  “He looks honest, and kindly,” she thinks to herself.  “I could trust him, I know.”