* * * * *

“KOHISEVA, 2 Oct. 1897.

“OLOF,—­Your letter found me.  Kyllikki is unchanged—­and you, I see, are much as I had thought you would be.  Proud and exacting as ever, though not perhaps in quite the same way.  And well it is so, for if you had seemed otherwise I should have suspected at once.

“Yes, I will venture.  I am ready to venture anything.  I did not even need to think it over; I had decided long since, and have not changed.  I am not ashamed to tell you that I knew more of you than you thought.  I have followed your doings and your movements from a distance, until you came home, and determined to wait for you till it was past hoping for.  I feel I ought to tell you this at once, that you may know I am not building up fair hopes on no foundation, but know what I am doing, and what I can expect.

“You need not fear pity from me, Olof.  I believe in fate, and in life as a thing with some meaning.  I have often wondered, these last few years, if there could be any meaning in my life, and why fate had brought us so strangely together.  Was it only to make us suffer?  I came at last to the conclusion that if there were any meaning in my life, it must be with you; and if fate had any plan at all, it must be that you should come back to me some day, even though the way were hard.  And you came, came with the very word I had been waiting to hear from your lips for years—­that you had need of me!  All is easy after that; no need to doubt or hesitate.  I can answer at once:  I am ready.

    “I do not think, or hope, that our way will be strewn with
    roses.  But it is right, I feel that; and in time we shall
    reach our goal.

    “Come, Olof, come soon.  Four years I have waited—­four years
    of longing, all my life’s longing.—­Your

    “WATER-WITCH.

    “P.S.—­Father is the same, but what you say about that is what
    I say myself.

“One thing I would ask you—­let me see you alone first, before you meet my father.  I could not bear to meet again after all these years in that way.  Come to our old meeting-place beforehand, if you can, and let me know what day and time you will be there.

    “KYLLIKKI.”

MOISIO

Olof walked up the steps to the homestead at Moisio.

A trifle pale, perhaps, but confident, ready to meet whatever might chance, and determined to gain his end.

He opened the door and went in.  There were two in the room:  an old man with bushy brows—­who, unaware of the visitor’s approach, was on the point of going out himself—­and a girl.  She was waiting anxiously, and as the door opened, her heart beat as if it would leap from her breast.

All three stood for a moment in silence.

“Good-day to you,” said Olof respectfully to the old man.