Olof made no answer.  He held the paper in a trembling hand, and read it again and again; a weight seemed lifted from his shoulders.

“May I—­may I keep this?” he asked, with flushing cheeks.

“Keep it—­ay, eat it, if you like.”

“Good-bye—­and—­and....”  He pressed the girl’s hand, as if unconscious of what he was doing.

The girl watched him as he hurried away.

“Queer lot,” she murmured.  “Something wrong somewhere....”

BY THE ROADSIDE

A man came walking down the sandy, grass-bordered road.

He walked mechanically, like a machine set to go, and going without consciousness or effort—­without a question or a thought, without a glance to either side—­on and on.

He reached the top of a rise from which the road sloped down to the valley.  And here he stopped, as if set to go no farther.

Before him spread the landscape of the valley; green woods encircled it on every hand, like a protecting fence about a pleasure-garden.  Within the area enclosed were mounds and hilly fields, stretches of meadow, farmsteads, rows of corn-sheaves and haystacks, patches of stubble, a tiny stream with a bridge and a fall, and mills on either bank.

A thrill of emotion seized the wanderer at sight of it all; one glance let loose a flood of memories and thoughts of things long since forgotten.

All seemed as before.  He looked at the stream, and followed the line of its course with his eye.  The mills stared at one another from bank to bank, as they had always done since the beginning of time.  But the mills themselves had changed.  The old wooden structures were gone, and in place of them stood modern stone-walled buildings.

A lightning thought came into his mind:  was there anything that was unchanged, though the setting seemed as it had been?  What might not have happened in the little place during those years?

The wanderer felt uneasy at the thought.  Here he was—­but who could say what he would find here, now he had come?

Slowly, with heavy steps, he took his way down towards the village.  And ever as he neared it, his uneasiness increased.

* * * * *

He came to a turn in the way.  From just beyond came the tinkle of a bell, and, as he rounded the bend, he saw a flock of sheep grazing, and a fair-haired lad watching the flock.

The sight gladdened his heart—­the sheep and the shepherd lad at least were as he had hoped to find them.

“Good-day!” he said heartily.  “And whose lad are you, little man?”

“Just Stina’s boy,” answered the young herdsman easily, from his seat by the wayside.

“Ho, are you? ... yes.”  The wanderer stepped across the ditch, sat down by the wayside, and lit his pipe.

“And what’s the news in the place?  I’ve been here before, d’ye see, and used to know it well.  But ’tis long since I heard anything from these parts.”