“News?...  H’m.”  The lad felt a pleasant sense of importance at being thus asked, and stepped down from his seat.  “Well, you’ve heard, maybe, ’twas Mattila’s Tytto won the first prize at the cattle show?”

“You don’t say so?  Mattila’s Tytto?” echoed the stranger, with a laugh.  “And what else?”

“Why, there’s no more that I know of—­let me see....”  The wise little eyes grew thoughtful.  “Oh, I forgot.  Yes, Maya, she’s married, and they’re building a bit of a place over by the clearing there.  Shoemaker, he was, and a good match, they say.”

“I see.  That’ll be the place.  Looks as good as could be.”

“’Tis a fine place.  Going to have a real stove, with a baking oven and all....  Then there’s been another wedding besides, at Niemi—­Annikki’s it was.  Only just married—­though there’s been plenty that asked her these years past, and rich men some of them too.”

“Yes....”  The wanderer felt as if something had struck him in the breast.  Impatiently he went on: 

“And how’s things at Koskela?”

“Koskela—­well, old man there he died last spring, and they say....”

“Died?” A heavier stroke this; it seemed to paralyse him.

“Yes—­and two horses to the funeral, with white covers and all.  And silver stars all over the coffin—­like the sky it was.”

The wanderer felt himself gazing helplessly into a darkness where hosts of silver stars danced before his eyes.

“You knew him, maybe?” asked the lad, watching the man’s face.

“Ay, I knew him,” came the answer in a stifled voice.

“And his wife’s like to follow him soon,” went on the boy.  “She’s at the last gasp now, they say.”

The wanderer felt as if something were tightening about his heart.

“So there’s neither man nor wife, so to speak, at Koskela now.”

The wanderer would have risen, but his limbs seemed numbed.

“There was a son, they say, was to have taken over the place, but he went away somewhere long ago, and never came back.”

The wanderer rose to his feet.  “Thanks, little man.”  And he strode off.

The lad stared wonderingly at the retreating figure, whose heavy steps sounded like sighs of pain from the breast of the trodden road.

THE CUPBOARD

“Come in,” said the key invitingly.

But the weary man stood motionless, paralysed by the thought that had come to him as he reached the door.

“Come in—­you’ve waited long enough in coming.”

And the weary man grasped the key, but stood holding it helplessly, like a child without strength to turn it.

It rattled in the lock under his trembling fingers.  The noise roused him; he opened the door and went in.

* * * * *

It was like entering a church.  A solemn, expectant silence hung over the place—­it was just as it had been when, as a child, he had first been taken to church.