“Aha-a-a!”

“So now they’ll call you Kohiseva—­and a good name too!”

“’Tis as good as another,” said Olof, with a laugh.  “And longer, anyway.”

“And now we’ll go down to the mill and see about drinks all round.  Twice round, it ought to be—­’twas worth it!”

* * * * *

When Olof came home that evening, a girl sat anxiously waiting at Moisio.

A bright rose was stuck between the palings of the fence beside the road.  Olof sprang across the ditch—­the girl drew her head back behind the curtain.

He fastened the rose in his coat.  With a grateful glance he searched the garden, up towards the house, but no one was to be seen.

In the safe shelter of her room a girl sat bowed over the table with her face hidden in her arms, crying softly.

THE SONG OF THE BLOOD-RED FLOWER

“Why are you so sad this evening, Olof?” asked the girl.

“Sad?” he repeated, almost to himself, staring absently before him.  “Yes—­I wish I knew.”

“But how—­when it is yourself—­don’t you know?”

“No—­that’s the strange thing about it.  I don’t know.”

There was a pause.

“I won’t ask you if you don’t like it,” she said, after a while.  “But if I were sad, and had a friend, I should want to.”

“And make your friend sad too—­by telling things no friend could understand?”

“Perhaps a friend might try.”

But Olof seemed not to have heard.  He leaned back, and his glance wandered vaguely.

“Life is very strange,” he said dreamily.  “Isn’t it strange to have cared very much for a thing—­and then one day to feel it as nothing at all?”

She looked inquiringly at him.

“My own life, for instance.  Up to now, it has been a beautiful story, but now....”

“Now...?”

“Now, I can’t see what it is—­or if it is anything at all.  Going from place to place, from river to river—­from one adventure to another....”

Again there was a pause.

“But why do you live so?” she asked timidly.  “I have so often wondered.”

“I wonder myself sometimes why I must live so—­or if I must—­but it goes on all the same.”

“Must...?  But your home ... your father and mother, are they still alive?  You have never spoken of them.”

“Yes, they are still alive.”

“And couldn’t you live with them?”

“No,” he said coldly.  “They could not make me stay.”

“But aren’t you fond of them?” she asked in surprise.

He was silent a moment.  “Yes,” he said at last, “I am fond of them—­as I am fond of many other things.  But there is nothing that can hold me for long.”

Something within him was striving for utterance—­something he had long restrained.

“And now,” he went on, almost violently, “I want....”  He stopped.